With Courage ON HOLD
by halfwit-halfblood
Summary: Amber finds herself unexpectedly flung into Narnia and stuck at sea with no apparent way home. While trying desperately to accept things as they come, she's left with new concerns that combine uneasily with the problems from her life in England, and a growing curiosity to discover what drew her into a journey of dragons, danger and dufflepuds.
1. Chapter 1

The gallery was exceptionally quiet.

Amber ambled through the almost silent building, excluding the occasional cough or heels clicking across the floor of the rare visitor, and found herself following her usual path despite scolding herself to go somewhere new. The Dulwich Picture Gallery housed a large and impressive collection, one that would be hard to appreciate in its entirety in a singular day, and yet she found herself not even attempting to explore its many depths and treasures. Instead Amber travelled the route she'd fashioned for herself 3 months ago and had since taken every week since. Her eyes skimmed over the work of Rembrandt and Poussin, though she loved them dearly, and found herself where she always ended up (much to her annoyance), in front of a painting of the ocean.

3 months ago, Amber stumbled upon an odd little corridor within the gallery, void of all decoration and art bar from this singular painting. There was no plaque to honour its creator, no name, no security patrolling, and lit only by a lone bulb in the centre of the ceiling. She had been tempted to question the staff multiple times, but always hesitated. The second her eyes lay on the painting, she found herself never wanting to leave; No matter how annoyed she might have been finding herself drawn to it time after time, to the point where she could easily map out the brush strokes and multitude of blues with her eyes closed, all of that negativity vanished as she stared at the piece. As much as she adored the details of the ocean, how vast and endless it appeared and yet comforting all the same, she loved the ship to the right of the scene just as much. How the sunlight warmed the curved bowsprit, uniquely shaped like the head of an armoured dragon, how the overwhelmingly large purple mast stood proud, billowing as if just caught in a gust of wind, and especially how the entire vessel sailed before the most stunning sunset she had ever witnessed. Rose clouds sponged with violet underbellies lay like brushstrokes against an electric cobalt sky, intersected with rays of pure gold and reflected onto the ocean for a doubly breath-taking view. It never ceased to draw her in, homing in her vision until it was the only thing she sensed, gently escorting her out of the gallery and into an infinite sea. She could smell the salty water, feel the spray from the waves across her face and hear the gentle squawk of a nearby seagull. In those stolen moments she found peace, but that's all they ever were. Moments. She eventually snapped herself out of the atmosphere as if she was coming up for air from a dive - though she felt as if she was truly breathing easy when lost at sea and not back in the gallery - drowning instead in reality and longing. Amber had grown used to yearning for the world inside the painting.

This day, however, was different. Typically, Amber would curse herself when exiting the serene trance and leave the gallery, promising herself to never return but her resolve never lasting more than a week, but now she dared not to move.

The ship was coming closer.

Amber stared in amazement as the vessel crested a wave and she noticed for the first time a minuscule crew on board, adjusting the mast and sparring casually upon the deck. Baffled as she was for missing this detail during previous visits, she had to remind herself that the painting had also been stationary up until now. The pull in her stomach that ate at her whenever she strayed from the painting returned stronger than ever, nagging her to step closer. So, she did. Nose practically touching the paper, Amber watched the ship continue its journey and found herself unconsciously raising her hand to touch the sea. Just to see if it felt as wet as it looked - that was all, she told herself.

Without warning she was sent off her feet and into the ocean and no longer aware of which way was up and which was down. Her winter coat hung heavy on her frame, weighing down her arms as she frantically tried propelling her body upwards. At one point she thought her hand had surmounted the waves and found crisp air, but that was quickly destroyed by another vicious swell of the tide that plunged her back into the unwelcoming deep. This, she decided, was _not_ what she meant when she said she wanted to be lost at sea.

Fighting for breath Amber hopelessly gulped for air but only felt water fill her lungs all too quickly. It was as if a weight had been attached to her foot, struggling organs and quickly extinguishing oxygen sending her away from the little light she could see. Everything was being swallowed up by the darkness quicker than she could panic about it. Her thoughts turned quiet, limbs useless and flimsy while her eyes failed to stay open. Then suddenly, without a moment between, she breathed and found air - not water. Her lungs immediately tried rejecting the briny liquid inside, coughing until her knees gave out and sent her crashing into the narrow wooden platform she'd been hauled on. As her surroundings solidified, she noticed the new weight of an arm around her waist, keeping her firmly in place as the platform jerked forward and bumped against the side of a ship. She was vaguely aware of being supported onto the deck and having something warm and dry placed across her shoulders, voices asking questions and the unrelenting heaviness of her head. It was only when an out of focus figure squeezed her shoulder and she mustered the energy to raise her head that she saw past the boat and into the view beyond. Specifically, the most stunning sunset she had ever seen.

Amber collapsed onto the ship deck.


	2. Chapter 2

I wake up coughing. Chest heaving erratically, spewing water next to a shallow puddle that had already established itself due to my dripping form, my eyes stay shut tight to keep out the sickness and the dread of what I'll find when they reluctantly open. I gulp in as much crisp, salty air as I can while gathering the courage to face my surroundings. My irregular heartbeat, though near deafening as it pounds in my ears, isn't enough to block out my other senses; something rough is digging into my palm splayed flat on the floor and the scents of wood and the ocean are overwhelming, far too vivid to be a dream. As I gradually adjust, I focus on what I can hear.

Wind billowing fabric.

Steadily rushing water.

Shuffling footsteps.

Many, many voices.

Fingers curl around my elbow, gently tugging upwards to encourage the rest of my body to follow. Once I'm standing, albeit unsteadily, I open my eyes and immediately stumble back, gasping. Standing before me is a hulking, hairy and hideous minotaur. "Are you alright, miss?" It says gruffly, but with a level of empathy I wouldn't have believed possible. Though I hadn't believed a painting becoming a portal to the middle of the ocean was possible, either. Instead of replying, I choose to survey my surroundings.

Over a dozen human faces stare back at me with varying degrees of curiosity and concern, on top of half a dozen unhuman faces, and in the gaps between the wall of bodies surrounding me I glimpse the sky, still displaying its stunningly vibrant shades. It was enough to convince me that I had really entered the painting I adore so much – it wasn't a sight to be replicated in some kind of maddeningly realistic hallucination. That and the minotaur, of course. "Is she deaf?" The minotaur asks, again with a jarringly gentle tone so oppositional to its threatening presence.

"N-No. I'm not." I say, the words leaving dry and weak, as if somebody scraped the inside of my throat with sandpaper.

"Where did you come from?" Asked a man, stepping through the crowd so he faced me directly. He was imposingly tall with a bald head, square face and features so sharp they could cut. Most importantly, he was angry.

"Drinian, that can wait. If she stays in those wet clothes she'll fall ill." I turn to face the new speaker, the man whose hand was still on my elbow. _Does he think I'm going to try and run away? On a ship?_ I think. He's as soaked through as I am, and I distantly piece together that I have him to thank for not letting me drown in unknown waters. His hair, the same shade as the chestnut brown ship, was plastered to his cheeks and dripping water on the towel draped over his shoulders while his clothes, a midnight blue poet shirt and black breeches, were like a second skin against his lean form. Despite the dying light painting his features in gold, his eyes are such a deep brown it's hard to see where his pupil starts and his iris stops.

The man now known as Drinian nods before calling for the crowd to disperse, and I'm led across deck through a door at the stern which blunts the raging wind but retains the creaking floorboards. As we travel down a corridor and into a semi-circular room with windows currently half submerged in the ocean, casting spiderwebbed light fractures across the floor, the man introduces himself as King Caspian of Narnia and apologises for the unintentional intimidation from the crew. He strides confidently across the room to a wardrobe, removing some clothes for himself before stepping away, gesturing for me to come in. The boat rocks unsteadily underneath my feet and I can't find the right balance to stop myself tipping too far against each ebb and flow over the waves, making me stumble awkwardly into a table. Caspian clears his throat, trying to hold back a laugh. "I'll leave you to get dressed and then we'll talk, miss…?"

"Amber. Amber Blackwill."

"Well, Miss Blackwill, I'll see you in 10 minutes or so. Leave your wet clothes on the side, somebody will dry them for you." He leaves the room, trailing water behind him. I'm envious at how he glides as if the boat isn't constantly trying to throw him off balance, but at least now I can stagger across the (mercifully obstacle free) space like a drunk in peace. From the wardrobe I take a purple shirt with sleeves I have to fold over three times before I can use my hands and brown breeches that hang to my ankles, secured tightly to my waist with a double buckled belt. Once I'm dressed, I curl up on the cushioned bench beside the windows and let reality roll over me.

_Where the bloody hell am I?_

I try to get my current situation to sink in, spiralling me into a frenzy that sends me screaming at the top of my lungs, off the deck and back into the water, but all I feel is numb. As if I'm just directing my body around on puppet strings, no emotions attached. Maybe I'm dead. Maybe I've become another casualty of war and this is the afterlife, but a near-death experience doesn't seem the right way to begin a journey like that. I'm not sure what would. One thing I accept, somehow, is that I've entered the painting from the gallery. Both the sky and what I managed to see of the dragon shaped bowsprit before being moved inside is enough to confirm it, but_ how?_ Perhaps death takes us where we most wanted to be while we were living, though the fact that I would choose an endless expanse of oil paint and isolation over my family doesn't sit easy with me. There's a knock on the door and Caspian enters a few moments after, taking his time across the entryway to give me time to cover myself if I had yet to finish dressing. _At least the afterlife has cute kings_, I consider briefly.

"How are you feeling?" He asks, sitting on the opposite side of the bench.

"Where am I?" I reply immediately, ignoring his question. My voice is stronger now. I'm not confident this period of numbness will last so I only have a limited amount of time to get off this boat and back to London before I melt down, meaning I need answers about what's going on right now. He startles at my eagerness but recovers quickly, only to be held off from responding by two men entering the room. One of them, who I know to be Drinian, walks to us and stands before the bench while the second collects my waterlogged clothes and slips out. I stare after him, unblinking. Instead of fleshy human legs, what should have been attached to his torso, there were goat legs. For some reason it's more surprising than the minotaur. Probably because I share half of what that faun has, and yet have no idea how it can live with _hooves_ – I hold back a grimace.

"You're on the silver sea, travelling from Narnia to the Lone Islands." I blink stupidly. I should've read the newspaper more, or paid attention in Geography, or just owned a stupid map, because I have no idea where any of those places sit in the world. Austria? Has Narnia been annexed by the Germans? They might throw me overboard when they find out I'm British or keep me as a prisoner or sell me into slavery. Are minotaurs Austrian? Drinian and Caspian share a glance, then Drinian steps forward, halting my inner ramble.

"Miss Blackwill, how did you come to be in the ocean thousands of miles from land and with no boat in sight?" _Good question. I have absolutely no idea_, is what I want to say. The way he phrases it as an impossible situation begs for an unbelievable tale, which in this case the truth is exactly that, but I'm once again plagued by images of them tossing my body to the sharks if I say, 'I fell through a magical painting in rural London', so I keep quiet.

"Are you…" Caspian begins hesitantly, avoiding Drinian's eye. "From England?" There's something about his demeanour that's changed, transformed by what I think could be hope. He's leaning forward, elbows on knees and hands clasped in front, with his mouth slightly open as if a victorious grin is just on the horizon depending on my answer. I feel my own hope raise its weary head.

"Yes. London, specifically." His smile changes his face completely, making him seem younger though I've yet to determine how old he is to begin with. He looks to Drinian excitedly, who remains stoic and unphased.

"Do you know the Pevensies?" He leans closer, one _'yes!'_ short of bouncing in his seat like a schoolboy, but unfortunately –

"I've never heard the name before, sorry." I say, making him visibly deflate. Neither of the men talk for a while, seemingly lost in thought.

"I really need to get back, actually. Is there any way you can take me there? There's a port by Southend-on-Sea that would do just fine." Caspian raises his head from where it was bowed over his knees and gives me a pitying look.

"I'm afraid Narnia is of a different world to your home. There's no one way to get back."

"Perhaps if you told us how you got here?" Drinian cuts in, softer this time.

"I must look wary, because Caspian cuts in again, "I assure you nothing you say will be impossible here." I take a deep breath, then tell them everything.


	3. Chapter 3

My sanity is slipping.

It's been seven days since I arrived, I think. It's hard to properly keep track in an environment like this, when every day follows a routine that's painfully monotonous. At dawn, the hammocks below deck are stowed for the day and the crew set about their various tasks of scrubbing above and below deck, the ladders and the hatches until Drinian determines it adequate. Breakfast consists of biscuits and sardines, though on Saturday's we're treated to salted pork, and occasionally someone brings out a bottle of wine to begin the day. When that happens, I've found it to be a sign of a great day which eventually turns sour; I partake when included and drink as much as I can get away with, grateful for its light buzz to numb my panicked thoughts, but after lunch the lurching of the ship catches up with my weakened stomach and I end up bent over a railing returning the sardines to their rightful home. Thankfully, the crew chalk it up to a lack of sea legs (now only partly true. I'm getting there.) and have yet to deny me my one saving grace in the mornings.

Following breakfast, a select few carry out further maintenance while the rest dissolve into their smaller groups and socialise. Some mend clothes, other spar, but mainly they talk, laugh, shout and sing shanties. In my case, I dedicate my morning to scanning the horizon and trying to will a piece of land into existence so we can dock or finding a convenient barrel to hide behind so I can observe the others.

Tavros, the minotaur, no longer shocks me merely with his presence and, for the most part, neither does the fact he's the sweetest member on board. Though not able to help cook – his exceptional strength combined with his hooved hands making it an impossible task, despite his determination – he's the most complimentary about the food and is always the first to help clean afterwards. From what I've seen, there's not a single member who dislikes him in the slightest way, and he makes a point of communicating with everyone and sustaining morale on the occasion where we're lacking. It sounds strange, having been here for such a short time, but I feel my mornings back home when I return will always be incomplete without his unfailingly cheerful greeting.

Caspian, once he's finished listening to reports from Drinian and the other high-ranking lieutenants, emerges from his office to have lunch with the crew, followed by overseeing the rowers changing shift, and stays on deck talking and sparring until dinner. It's hard to remember he's considered a king here, wherever here is. Despite his clothes differing from the uniform everyone else (including myself) wears, his regal posture and the broadsword that puts our cutlass's to shame slung at his hip, those features seem to melt away when he's in conversation. The ease with which he jokes with the crew is something I never expected from a king, not those in my childhood storybooks, at least. Always so stoic and stately, like Drinian, and unswervingly old. Caspian seems to defy everything I thought a king would be, except his humble offering of his private cabin to me on my first day here. When I saw the hammocks strung from the rafters in columns three high, where he had moved to for the nights, I was infinitely grateful for it.

Much of the crew stayed clear of me, to which I felt a mix of gratitude and disappointment. It was easier to observe at a distance, though I think that may have been one of their reasons for keeping far – I was always _watching_. A faint part of me recognised how weird it must seem, a stranger washed up in the deep sea claiming to be from another land, spending all her time observing without comment, but I was fascinated with this world of fauns and minotaurs and even a giant talking mouse called Reepicheep, who sang and talked more than the rest and always bowed the deepest. It never felt good to be alone, though. On the occasion that I did interact with others, they were unfailingly polite, which made me feel guilty about being so odd. Thankfully I had –

"Get out from behind the crate and spar me, Blackwill!" -Marco. He appeared above me, leaning the top half of his body on the aforementioned crate and grinning down at me. I startled and looked away from the gap between boxes I used to spy and up at him.

Marco Diesmich, second son to an esteemed blacksmith, was the youngest member on board at only 19. Apparently, his father had made all the blades on board the Dawn Treader, and he joked that he was here to oversee their care, but I had learnt from Caspian that he was currently in disagreement with his father about his future and offered his service to evade him. Caspian had seen his determination and desperation and agreed, believing that the fresh air and free time would help him think.

"We've only just had lunch, can't it wait?" I whine. I was too busy wallowing in despair to focus on trying not to get sliced open while being watched by mythical creatures. The pressure was intense, especially when I consider my shoddy footwork and our previous match that resulted in me trying to pry my cutlass from the mast, only for Tavros to lift it out with a swift pull. The problem, however, was that I was still holding on to the damn sword. My legs dangled above the deck as he brandished it in the air, my hands trapped underneath his around the hilt. He soon noticed and apologised, and I did my best to hide my embarrassment as I went to Marco giggling by the railing, giving him a swift elbow to the gut.

He frowned and leaned over the crate to tug on my arm, cheering when I reluctantly stood up, accepting the cutlass he had holstered at his hip. If I'm being honest, Marco was hard to say no to. What with his boyishly rounded face, untameable black curls and dimples, he was like a little brother I wanted to protect, and his seemingly infinite energy always managed to infect me. I was lucky to have him here, it was easier to connect with somebody my own age rather than men of 30 years or more, many of which had wives and children back home. That and we were almost the exact same size, so his clothes fit me well.

We took up our places opposite each other on the deck, circling slowly as the tension built. I knew Marco was doing it for my benefit, he was always ready to lunge right in but it was the moments before, the anticipation for that first clang of metal and the vibrations it sends down my arm, that got me ready for a fight. I had grown to love the way the stress melted from me as I assumed position, my limbs loose and ready to dance. I let a slow grin take over my face, to which Marco returned, and then, he lunged.

I brace myself with one foot in front of the other and parry his attack, forcing him back and allowing me to shift into a feint, raising my sword as if to swing towards his face as he lunges again to deflect, only to allow me to attack with a downward swing, using gravity as my ally. He retaliates with a circle parry, curving his tip of his blade against mine to deflect and forcing us apart. We circle again and I can feel my body thrumming with adrenaline, waiting for the next move so I can let my limbs take over and guide me back into this dangerously elegant dance. He feints left and I stumble, catching myself in a lunge and only just managing to parry his beat attack. He swings his blade against mine continuously until rapid-fire clangs of metal against metal is the only sound left audible, the pressure in my arm as I'm forced to keep slicing upwards steadily increasing, throwing off my aim. He waits until my arm is swung out wide before he performs a regular attack, bringing his blade to my neck so that I can only deflect the tip. Immediately he lets go of all force, letting my blade slide against his and down to my side as he does the same.

He swings an arm around my shoulder. "Better luck next time, kid!" He calls, skipping off to a group of seamen who watched the match.

"I'm older than you, you little-" I cut off abruptly when I see Caspian waiting by the railing, holding out a cup of water. I accept it and thank him, leaning against the wall and regaining my breath.

"You're getting better. In another week I think you could beat him."

"You'll need to teach me some new techniques, I think he caught on to me using gravity to my advantage." He nods in agreement. Despite alternating between training and instructional spars with Marco on deck, Caspian had taken to teaching me in his quarters when I arrived. _"I promise you I will you get you home, but I would sleep easier if you could wield a sword lest we meet danger."_ He said the morning after I arrived. When he first handed me a sword, I was sceptical. The blade was as long as my arm with a wickedly sharp curve, but I couldn't deny the excitement I had felt too, the feeling that I had a chance at becoming like the heroines I read in stories as a child.

"It would be my pleasure." He responds smoothly. "How have you been?" I shrug and look out across the boundless sea.

"I still miss home. All this… there's not one thing the same. It's still taking time to adjust." _Except the feeling of being surrounded from all angles by people I can't get away from_, but I don't include that.

"If you were home, what would you be doing?" He says, mimicking my pose with elbows on the railing, looking down into the ocean.

"Visiting a gallery maybe," I feel a pang in my chest at the thought of Dulwich. The white linoleum tiles, gilded golden frames, and an atmosphere so cosy it wrapped around you like a fluffy blanket. I wonder if the receptionist spared a thought for my absence this week; that gallery has plagued me with the only homesickness I'd ever experienced, but would anyone notice? I chase the thought from my head. "or painting."

"You're an artist?" He says, with what I believe to be genuine interest.

"There's nothing I love more. I've been doing it for 12 years." He's quiet for a while. I turn to him, but he's already looking at me.

"I'm sorry we don't have the equipment here."

"It's okay, frustrating sometimes though. There're so many things I'd love to sketch here. People, too." My fingers itch for a pencil as my eyes trace over my favoured areas, the things I would draw first. The bowsprit. The crows nest. Reepicheep. Finally, Caspian. He leans in conspicuously.

"I heard Tavros was a model in his youth. I'm sure he'd volunteer for you." We grin, turning to where he's speaking with Drinian. At that moment he decides to flex a hairy arm, making us laugh. I notice that even the stoic captain cracks a smile too.

We stay by the railing in a comfortable silence, appreciating the simple sounds of the water lapping up the sides of the boat and the blurred murmurings of the crew. I turn to view his profile, admiring the straight line of his nose, the hair curling over his shoulders and how the gradually thickening stubble defines his jaw. "How old are you?" He startles from the break in the silence and looks to me, a small smile playing on his lips.

"Where's this coming from?" He asks.

"I can't figure it out. You look young, but isn't there some kind of law about how old a king should be?" Pretending I pay attention to laws and history seems like a smarter route than mentioning that all the _(fictional)_ kings I know of are old and grey.

"Not if you're the only royal left alive." A crease forms between his eyebrows. I wince, cursing my lack of tact.

"O-oh. I'm sorry."

"Not to worry. I'm 20." He quickly covers any pain or sorrow up with a smile.

"Good to know." I nod slowly. Curious how the highest-ranking person on board is one year off from also being the youngest.

"And you?"

"The same." I can't stop the smile that twitches my lips upwards. "Do you have a queen?" I blurt out. _Subtle_, I chastise myself.

"I'm afraid not, I rule alone. Have you any wisdom to share in the art of courting?" _Other than the time Bobby Price tried to kiss me when we were fourteen and I ran into a wall to get away from him?_ I decide not to share that story. Sometimes I think I can still hear the _thunk_ of my forehead against the plaster, feel an echo of the pain that immediately blossomed in the seconds before I passed out. He watches me carefully.

"Unfortunately, no. Though I think Drinian would look dashing in a wedding gown." I raise my eyebrows and turn to the captain. Even if he were dressed in a flouncy frock, I doubt anyone would think to cross him still. His presence is formidable even beside Tavros. Caspian laughs and together we watch as he strides across the deck barking orders to adjust the mast.

"I should help." He says regretfully. With a soft smile and a swift nod, he leaves to assist one of the crew with tightening the knots attached to the ratlines.

With no other distraction available, I think back to Dulwich. I'd give anything to be back there again, to feel my thoughts numb as I overwhelm my senses with colours and scenes and textures. I try to think of a piece other than the ship that I can recall with the same clarity, but it's impossible. Always, without fail, my mind drifts back to the ship. A nagging voice tells me there was a reason I was drawn to it, something far stronger than mere appreciation. I could have a purpose here, but what? Amongst sailors, fighters, kings and fauns – where do I fit in?

Yesterday morning creeps back into mind. I woke at sunrise and waited for Caspian to arrive for our sword fight session by the window. As I studied the waves rolling forward, and the occasional water nymph leaping from them like a dolphin, I felt a strange sense of belonging. The ebb and flow of the sea and the distant creaking from those on deck filled me with warm comfort, and I itched to go out and take my first inhale of the crisp, clean air for the day. My mind was clear from thoughts of England, but when I caught the sunlight glinting off my home keys on the table, miraculously not lost when I almost drowned, I was uneased. In that moment, London felt like a misplaced puzzle piece, fracturing the near complete picture as it forced itself in. Or maybe… Maybe I was the incorrect piece. There was a knock on the door, and I shook those thoughts away to greet Caspian. Every time the unease snuck back in, I thought of Dulwich and the comfort it brought me and ignored how even then the reassurance was linked to the Dawn Treader.

Afternoon hours pass by lazily as I try to list everything I like about England and everything I dislike about being here, forcing myself to remember which one my real home is. I try not to worry about how it's becoming harder to do as time goes on.

Some of the crew are passing around a bottle of rum, singing a shanty about a dragon and a dryad, when Marco joins me in silently appreciating the view. "How long do you think this journey will be?" I ask.

"A few months at least. We thought we'd be able to see the first Lone Island by now." He responds, untroubled at the thought of spending months on a piece of floating wood, rarely seeing anything but an endless expanse of blue. I nod and try not to let my panic consume me. It hits me then, sudden and unwelcome, that I have no idea what this journey is for. I never thought to ask and rarely dwelled on passing conversations when the crew spoke of their mission. This wasn't just for rest and relaxation, I know that much.

"Excuse me." I say, scanning the deck for Caspian. When I don't find him, I head to what I've come to see as his office, the semi-circular room I was taken to when I first arrived. I hear voices inside and consider leaving it for another time, but my worry has consumed my head all too quickly. I can't walk away from an answer. I knock and am greeted with Drinian's permanent scowl, with Caspian in view on the bench behind. "Sorry to interrupt, I was wondering if I could have a word with Caspian?" I ask timidly. He turns to the man in question.

"Inform the men. We can discuss details later." He addresses to Drinian, who nods and turns to leave. He stops by me, hissing in my ear.

"It's _King_ Caspian." I say nothing, side-stepping away from the door so he can close it behind him.

"What did he say?"

"A mere reminder that I should be calling you King." I wave my hand flippantly.

"Why don't you?" He asks, but without scorn. It sounds like mere curiosity.

"You're not my King. England hasn't had a king ruling us for years." He gestures to the bench hugging the far wall, inviting me to sit.

"Very well. So you know, I don't mind what you call me."

"Alright, you old pillock." I smirk, and he laughs.

"Narnians don't share whatever that is, so I'll assume it was a delightful compliment and move on. Are you well?" I'm grateful that between all the fantasy lands I could have travelled to, I ended up with one that has a king capable of taking a joke.

"Yes, but I was wondering where exactly it is we're going. Not that the journey hasn't been fun, but I don't want to be gone from home too long."_ If I am, I might not want to go back._ He stands up, showing me to the wall beside the door which has been decorated with sketched portraits of seven old, sophisticated looking men.

"We're travelling in search of seven Lords who were once closely employed to my father. They were said to have fled Narnia when my uncle rose to power and never returned."

"So they should be on these islands we're travelling to?" He then leads me to a large map of the land spread across a table.

"With any luck, yes. Before you arrived, we had already been at sea for a month. We've searched the seven isles," he points to a cluster of small shapes to the right of an overwhelmingly large landmass labelled Narnia, "But learnt little. The Lone Islands are our last chance at finding somebody who might know where they are." His hand travels south along the map, brushing three ink dots labelled Felimath, Doorn and Adra. His eyes are set with fierce determination, and a part of me finds that I want to stick around to see him succeed. These men must be the only connection he has to his father, and if I had a similar tether from which I could learn from, I know I'd stop at nothing to find it.

"Will you take them back to Narnia with you?"

"If they wish to join me, yes. I'd be honoured to have my fathers' men in my council." I rest my hand on his shoulder.

"You'll find them. I'm sure of it." He lays his hand on mine and squeezes quickly in thanks.

At some point, we end up back on the bench as Caspian details their travels through the seven isles. From Redhaven, with bread rolls so sweet it felt like tasting summer itself, Brenn and their festival to celebrate good health, lining the streets with flowers crafted from ribbon and glass (he shows me a purple crocus flower made of corella glass gifted to him by a vendor, the sunlight arcs from the petals to scatter lilac rays through the room and I can't imagine anything more beautiful) and finally to Muil, home to fire-breathers and imposingly strong hunters who claim to be the siblings of white wolves. When the sun begins to set, there's a knock at the door. Drinian enters a second later without invitation, which I suppose as captain he doesn't need, and says its time for dinner.

"Right… Right, of course." Caspian responds, his mind split between memories of Muil and the present. He stands, offering me a hand as we leave the room. I murmur thanks to Drinian for holding the door open but stop part way down the corridor when I hear no footsteps. Drinian's hand is on Caspian's arm, stopping him from going farther. "Go ahead, we'll be there shortly." He says, with a smile that looks forced. I turn the corner and pretend to keep walking for a while as I crouch and listen in, waiting for them to think they're alone.

"Do not get attached, your majesty. This won't end well." Drinian says sympathetically.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about." Caspian's voice is drawn tight, a hidden warning. I hurry to leave when I hear their footsteps.

* * *

The following week passes in a blur, as if each day was a blot of paint smudged together by a careless hand. My mornings, once used solely for improving my sword fighting ability, had now developed into long hours discussing Narnia and its many curious inhabitants with Caspian, who I discovered to be a marvellous story teller. I began speaking to the crew more, asking about their home and their travels, drinking in each tale as if it would be my last.

Through it all, I avoided talk of London. And when I drifted to sleep each night, I pictured myself in one of the stories I had heard during the day. Dancing with dryads in the moonlight to a faun's flute, riding alongside centaurs in the Battle at Aslan's How, and participating in the royal court with Caspian and the Kings and Queens of Old. I dreamt of Narnia, aching to visit and explore the land, but always woke with the intention of stopping. _England is my home_, I reminded myself each morning. Come supper, the thought was far gone, though the guilt when I remembered never lessened.

Approximately two weeks after I arrived, everything changed.

It was midday. I was learning how to tie a bowline knot on deck, the smell of stew minutes away from being completed wafting up through the hatch and distracting me, when the lookout started yelling. Three men, including Caspian, dove off the boat in graceful arcs while those still on board lowered a plank of wood over the side. I recognised it from when I was brought on board, and soon enough there was Caspian supporting a girl onto the deck. More sailors helped two more soaked strays, providing them with towels and greetings. The crowd is thick, and through it I can only grasp glimpses of what's happening. Caspian steps above the crowd, announcing to those gathered.

"Crew! Behold our castaways, Edmund the Just and Lucy the Valiant. High King and Queen of Narnia."


	4. Chapter 4

Row by row, the crew sink to their knees and bow their heads in respect. After a moment's hesitation, I do the same.

The crowd disperses as to not overwhelm them and my view is finally clear. They appear younger than I am, but not by much, and greet Caspian and Reepicheep like old friends; which, I've learnt through Caspian's stories, they are exactly that. As for Caspian, this is by far the happiest he's been through the whole journey. It was one thing to hear the love in his voice when he spoke of the King and Queens of Old, but to see how it transforms him first hand is unbelievable. He looks younger now than ever.

He looks like he's home.

A scream splits the air, startling us all. "That giant rat thing just tried to claw my face off!" A boy, small and pinched with the word 'privileged' all but spelled out on his forehead, yells, his voice hoarse from coughing. His whole body shakes as he stands, pointing an accusatory finger at Reepicheep.

"I was merely trying to expel the water from your lungs, Sir." It's with a combination of pity and amusement that I watch the boy come apart. When I was introduced to Reepicheep, I was fortunate enough to have felt like my brain was a broken-down car waiting for repair, incapable of functioning and by extension, doing anything else unwanted – like spewing black clouds of fuel or exploding. Had it been whirring happily, I could see myself responding the same way he is now.

"I demand to know just where in the blazes am I?!" _He won't be able to live this down any time soon_, I think, cringing on his behalf.

"You're on the Dawn Treader, the finest ship in Narnia's navy." Tavros answers. The crew roars with laughter louder than ever as the boy collapses on the deck. I sigh and turn away. He'll have a dreadful headache when he wakes, which I wish I didn't know from experience.

Marco nudges my shoulder and nods his head in the direction of the kid, now in Tavros's arms as he moves him below deck. "Long lost brother of yours?" He jokes. I fake an exasperated sigh and plaster a smile on my face, trying to smother the pang in my chest. _I can't say for sure_, I think begrudgingly.

"Do you think King Edmund would duel me? I'd love to be able to tell my father I fought him. Did you know he took on the White Witch alone on the Fords of Beruna?" Marco keeps looking over his shoulder to the door he, Queen Lucy, and Caspian disappeared through as if he'd return brandishing a sword asking for a sparring partner immediately after being fished out of the ocean. His face is alight with childlike wonder, living legends he'd known only as bedtime stories now real and breathing and stuck with him for months with no escape... I consider warning them in advance.

"You respect their authority, do you?" I jump, spinning around and almost colliding with Caspian, currently watching me in amusement. A mere moment after Marco last craned his neck to check the door, Caspian had appeared in dry clothes, including a rich, sweetly scented leather tunic I have to restrain myself from not leaning in and inhaling deeper. I'm reminded of the farm I used to visit in my childhood, though my memories of the chipper yellow barn have turned sour with age.

"What do you mean?"

"You bowed to them, am I not worthy of the same?" He tries to feign hurt but a slow grin cracks his façade easily, and I huff out a sigh of relief.

"I didn't want to draw attention to myself. I thought standing above a crowd of kneeling sailors would do just that."

"I understand." He places a hand on my arm, then turns to call over Edmund and Lucy as they emerge from the stern. "I'd like you both to meet Amber Blackwill, our latest recruit."

"A female sailor! Susan would be pleased." Lucy delights, nudging Caspian. He waves it off flippantly.

"How long have you been a sailor for? You look so young!" Edmund jumps in. I struggle for words, running through my options mentally and trying to determine which best matches my desire of 'ambiguous truth'.

"I, um… Two weeks?" I look to Caspian for help, faltering when I see him trying to stifle a laugh.

"She was brought here much like you were, through a painting of our ship she frequented in London." He relieves me of my fumbling, my relief momentarily more present than what he's just said.

"You're from England?" Lucy asks. Hope rolls through me like a flood –_ they're like me._

"Yes! Are you?" My heart seizes in my chest, clenched with the promise of home that I'd allowed to slowly dwindle.

"They're the Pevensies I spoke of before." Caspian explains, but I take a moment to recall when they were mentioned.

_"Do you know the Pevensies?" He leans closer, one 'yes!' short of bouncing in his seat like a schoolboy._ Since that first conversation he had mentioned the Kings and Queens of Old countless times, but never linked them as he's just done.

"That's brilliant! Do you know how to get back?" I implore, eyes switching between them.

"So eager to leave my company?" I hear Caspian mutter, but I've long since stopped taking anything he says seriously.

"Caspian, you know I've enjoyed it so far, but I wasn't made to live on a boat, it's too crowded." For some reason, I feel the need to explain regardless of the context in which he asked. Other than Marco, he's the only aspect of this journey that's keeping me sane, and I don't enjoy the idea of him believing for a second that I'd abandon that support easily.

"I know. If I were in your position, I'd want to find a way home too." He says softly.

Edmund clears his throat and we look to him simultaneously, his eyes momentarily flashing between Caspian and I, eyebrows knitted. "I'm sorry, but no. The first time we left Narnia we were guided by a white stag, and the second we were simply decreed to go by Aslan."

Lucy cuts in. "It's always after we assist them in some way. If you're here, there's a reason. We'll just have to wait to see what it is." I nod slowly, feeling my hope decay into a cold, dead weight that unsettles my stomach. With a strained smile, I thank them, and walk away.

The feeling of being sent here, on a boat isolated from land in a world that shouldn't be possible, for a specific purpose is deeply unsettling. Despite my growing attachment to these people and the home they speak so fondly of, that does not make it my home too.

My home is England. My home is soot stained streets and charcoal houses. Bowler hats and stockings, not leather tunics and breeches. I live each day questioning if it's my last, wandering streets stacked high with loose bricks and splintered wood from the last raid that shook the earth, smiling at strangers as we power through our broken city, praying that today will be the day we don't pass the remnants of those who hadn't made it through the night. Our chimney smoke is entwined with despair and our lungs near black and useless, but we persist. We believe, we hope, and above anything else, we keep calm and carry on.

My reality is not braiding daisies into the hair of a young faun at twilight while the fire that warms us leaps in the air and performs a daring tale or galloping alongside centaurs through thick forest groves and across dazzling emerald valleys, peppered with the stone huts of dwarves where we rest and admire the snow-capped mountains in the distance. My reality is certainly not twirling around a floor inlaid with real gold with royals, mesmerized by the strum of a harp and the effortless rhythm with which the crowd dances, their movements fluid as water. My reality is not the stories I have heard. It doesn't belong to me.

Though I desperately wish it did.

I consider entertaining the thought that my reason for being here could lead to a long life in Narnia. That I'm meant to be a Queen, like Lucy, and who could tell a Queen she has to return to a land at war? Beyond a few spare moments, no one would question my absence in England. I'd be documented as one of many causalities sustained, and those I knew would soon refocus on not joining me in the steadily rising death toll.

_This_ is why I need to go back. Fantasizing of a peaceful life is disastrous; the more I entangle myself in this, the harder it will be to free myself when I'm eventually cast out, as I know I will be. My dreams upon returning will be plagued by idyllic environments out of my grasp, memories of here slipping through my fingers like mist until long forgotten. Tar and ash will embrace my lungs, as a parent would hug a child, with an unrelenting tightness until I can no longer recall what inhaling the fresh, salty, ocean air felt like. In time it will be all I know, which can only be for the best, but the longer I spend here means the longer time I will spend in pain, desperately trying to rid myself of the memories sooner.

I'd rather drown. 

* * *

Amber's thoughts follow the same, continuous cycle for hours after her conversation with King Edmund and Queen Lucy, rocking through in time with each crest of a wave.

_I need to go home. I can't go home. I don't want to go home. I need to go home. I can't go home. I don't want to –_

"You look worse than you did when we pulled you out the sea. What's troubling you?" Marco sidles up beside her with the courage he had been building for the past half hour, sending her concerned glances to which she responded to with a blank, oblivious gaze over the sea. Everything sharpens at the sound of his voice, as if her surroundings were muffled behind a heavy door, now open. Her eyes soften when she notices his worry.

"I need to go home, but by the looks of it I won't get the opportunity to any time soon." Marco straightens. He assumed as much, and now he had to hope he chosen the right way to try and help.

"You have two options, Amber." He says firmly, stepping away from the railing and concealing his hands behind his back. Intrigued, Amber mimics his position opposite.

"And they are?"

He reveals one hand, holding a half empty bottle of rum. "Wallow in self-pity, spend your days drinking in a hammock and hurling over the railing or –" He reveals the second, hand clasped around the hilt of a sword. "Embrace it. Enjoy the view and the company and try and best me in a fight." He studied her reaction carefully. Typically, he wouldn't be so direct. He'd disguise his attempts to cheer her up as obvious jokes or passing comments, but he couldn't deny his father's preference for blunt truth had its benefits. Besides, she didn't need a pat on the arm or a sympathetic 'I'm sorry'. She needed a distraction. Thankfully, that was his specialty.

She smiles, nodding slow in agreement, before accepting the sword. He'd chosen the ones with the branched hilts, woven cages of gold painted steel that encased your hand, handily doubling as brass knuckles for close quarter combat, though they were rarely used as such in casual sparring. She held her thumb underneath the cross guard, wrapping her fingers half way around the hilt to free her movements and treat the weapon as a fluid extension of her arm as Caspian had taught her.

They take their positions and start to circle, but two steps in the match begins. Amber lunges forward, arcing her blade downwards and forcing Marco to parry up and out wide to the right, leaving his person unprotected. Their swords scrape against each other as they deflect, Amber swiftly pulling her sword free of its strain against the other, completing an arc in the shape of an elaborate C as she swipes up to his neck. Marco tactfully retreats back, lunging in a second later to begin a rapid back-and-forth of attacks and deflects. With each attack he pushes his blade with increased pressure, forcing Amber to hold her arm closer to her body and limit her range. From the split second glances he gets of her expression between each move, he can see her temper shorten. Eyebrows furrowed and mouth drawn in a tight line, she dives backwards and right, out of range for his attack. The momentum from his swing twists his body away from her, presenting the opportunity for Amber to swing her sword up and underneath his arm where the tip could prick his chin, but his circle parry response is swifter than her thanks to experience, forcing her blade toward the ground. As she lifts her sword again, an idea springs to mind. Stupid, dangerous, and completely unpractised. Should be fine, she thinks sarcastically. Marco attacks again, but instead of parrying as he predicted, Amber plunges her sword through the handle of his, wedges it into one of the larger gaps in the makeshift cage, and pulls.

The sword is ripped from his grasp, thrown up by Amber as she separates it from her own, before catching the second weapon in her left hand and arcing it towards his neck – stopping mere millimetres away, her own sword poised over his heart. A seagull gives an uninterested squawk as the crew descend into shocked silence, processing the unexpected outcome. Marco and Amber stand silent, staring and breathing heavy with both swords still raised.

"It's about time." Marco huffs, grinning. As if spurred from a daze by his voice, the crew cheer respectfully and swarm around the stunned pair. Amber lowers her arms, still in disbelief that it worked and had garnered her first ever win. Her grin widens with each pat on the back, basking in the praise and accepting the celebratory glass of rum from a nearby crew member before the crowd dissolves into smaller groups, a few members remaining to partake in pleasant conversation. The dregs of adrenalin still coursing through her, chest light with the freeing possession of victory, Amber floats through the remaining hours of the day without another thought of London.

Caspian watched on in amusement and relief. Earlier, when Edmund delivered the unfortunate news, the weight of her new reality slumped her shoulders and settled misery over her previously optimistic features. He reluctantly left her to process it alone, but never strayed far lest she'd require company.

While conversing with Edmund and Lucy about the journey ahead of them, his attention swayed to where Amber stood facing Marco by the railing. By the time he'd parried her first lunge, the Pevensies had accepted that he was lost to them, at least until the spar had met its end. He marvelled at how well she had improved over the past fortnight, the sword a natural and graceful extension of her arm, swung deftly and with precision. She grinned broadly as she was congratulated by the crew and Caspian silently thanked Marco for whatever he had said to her.

**A/N: So I know this story is SUPER slow right now, but it's going to pick up in the next chapter, they're finally going to reach the first Lone Island. After that, it gets a lot quicker (I think. I haven't written it yet, but that's the intention.) Feel free (translation: Please. I need validation.) to favourite or leave a review if you're enjoying it so far.**


	5. Chapter 5

The following morning, mere minutes after I leave the deck for a glass of water, I come back out to the dazzling sun to see that a spar has begun. Though not just any spar – Caspian has challenged Edmund.

It's an elegance I've never seen before, a dance in perfect balance. Everyone on deck has either pressed themselves against the sides of the ship or climbed to an elevation where they're not at risk while the two kings caper, attacking with perfect form and precision. I'm mesmerised by their skill, how effortlessly they can transform a leap into a lunge, or a dive into a deflect. Their blades cross into a golden X, the sunlight sliding across the metal as they push, until Caspian twists and swings to rest the sword at Edmund's neck, ending the match.

I clap the best I can with the glass of water still in my hand, admiring how Caspian flips his broadsword back into his scabbard with a casual ease – though I quite like the idea of him practising it religiously in private until the move was perfect. "Alright, back to work!" Drinian barks from the forecastle, where he's often perched like a crow, looking down at the deck while he's overseeing the wheel.

Caspian notices me and I hold up the glass of water in offering – with the way his chest is rising and falling rapidly, he has more need of it than I do. He jogs over and mumbles his thanks before downing half the glass. "I think after some more training, I'd quite like to duel you." I muse. I ignore the obvious – I've won a singular match, and that was through sheer dumb luck – and instead welcome the idea of sharing a moment like that with Caspian. Close enough to see the light in his eyes, how they shine when he's deciding his next move or how he relishes in each successful strike, his movements strong and confident when fuelled with a growing adrenaline. It's hypnotic.

He raises his eyebrows and smirks. "Oh really? Well, after a few years maybe you can last longer than a minute." He winks and takes another sip. I let out an exaggerated hiss and hold my hand over my heart in mock pain.

"How rude, _your Majesty_. Is that how you talk to your inferiors?" He leans his head back, shaking it slightly and chuckling.

"The ones who say they want to fight me, yes." He responds, turning to me.

"Consider the proposition revoked." I hold my hands up and bow, a teasing smile tugging the corners of my mouth up. He smiles and leans his elbows back on the railing, stretching his legs out in front and resting his cheek on his shoulder as he turns to me.

"Are you more comfortable at sea now?"

"I am. The people here are nicer than most of the people I knew in London." I nod, looking over the deck in gratitude. On the opposite side, Marco is halfway up the ratlines securing a knot that had loosened, watched closely by Reepicheep who's nimbly jumping across the rope talking about a marsh-wiggle he met as a child. Tavros and a group of seamen are transporting crates below deck while Drinian rests beside the stairs leading to the forecastle platform sharpening a blade and sporadically yelling at someone. While Drinian may not be the embodiment of a sweet summer rose, he's still considerably kinder than the man who once bellowed at me because I took a second more to move forward in line when buying groceries last year.

"I accept only the best men in my crew, though you make me wonder if I should have included women too."

"How so?"

"You have a way with ordering the crew that makes them work more efficiently than they would've done if I was the one commanding." I raise my eyebrows in doubt. "Take Marco for example, he's the best in terms of rowing, a skilled fighter with an impeccable memory, though he's always been lax when it comes to deck maintenance. That changed when you started pointing out his mistakes. His clove hitch knots have never been better."

"I was only telling him what you told me."

"Well, he only listened to one of us." We watch as he finishes securing the knot, double checking its stability, before swinging back onto the deck.

"Clearly you're lacking a firm hand, Caspian." He leans in slightly, eyes darting between mine. I force myself not to look away.

"Perhaps you could teach me?"

"I –"

There's a sudden yell from the crow's nest and behind Caspian I can see Drinian straighten. "Your Majesty! The first Lone Island is in view!" Caspian leaps away from the railing, scanning the horizon until a cheer erupts from his throat.

"Excuse me." He says quickly, brushing my arm before racing to Drinian's side to get a better view through the spyglass.

I feel rooted to the spot, stuck fast with shock after what felt like two rapid-fire slaps to the face. Was Caspian_ flirting?_ I can't decide if I'm thankful or disappointed at the intrusion, what would I have even said in response to that? Flapped around like a fish out of water I expect. I think instead of the actual disruption –_ land!_

Racing to the opposite railing, I nearly cry in relief seeing a spec of brown in the distance, like an accidental ink blot on an otherwise steady blue canvas. The idea of standing on solid ground again with no swaying or creaking beneath my feet unleashes a painful desperation inside me, a physical ache in my chest urging me to jump overboard and swim there if it would be faster – which, of course, it wouldn't be.

My legs are restless, tapping against the floor and bubbling with energy that's telling me to move. I could run laps around the ship, and I have no doubt the energy would still be there, craving more. Yearning for the sharp tickle of grass between my toes or the crunch of gravel under a boot. Soft carpet and fine sand. Clanging metal and jagged rock. Anything, _anything_, but wooden planks.

Lucy bounds up beside me, staring at the island too. "Are you excited to take your first step on Narnian soil?" She asks.

"I'd be excited if I could step on a volcano, if I'm honest. As long as it's stationary, I want it."

"I hope you can wait the day until you do." My shoulders slump. I reluctantly tear my eyes away from the island, now looking impossibly far away. I knew it would be a while, but my mind is working overtime imagining what could be there already.

Food stalls where they'll have a fresh hog roast, the deliciously rich scent weaving through the streets like ribbon, ensnaring itself with tobacco and the spicy aroma of cedar trees they'd have growing nearby. Meat you can eat right off the bones, still warm and dripping.

Fruit orchards bursting with apples and oranges, limes and lemons. My mouth waters at the prospect of having fresh fruit again, the juices plentiful and explosive with their sharp flavours so unlike our stews and dried meat on board which all lost their taste to me a week ago. And the _colours!_ Reds, oranges, yellows and greens – shades lost to me except at sunrise and sunset as I'm drowned in blue, brown and black every day. The possibilities are so dizzying that I start to feel sick with anticipation.

"Amber, come meet Eustace." I feel Lucy's hand wrap around my wrist, tugging me forward. I try to pay attention but the thought of buckets full of fresh food keeps drifting into mind.

Eustace openly assesses me, so I do the same. While I sympathise with his shock and wariness of some of the crew, I can't help but find him frustrating with everything he says. His face looks sallow and tinged green, eyes and mouth pinched as if he'd just bitten a lemon, all his movements jittery and tense.

"She's from London too, Eustace." Lucy says.

"Amber Blackwill." I introduce, holding out my hand. He recoils slightly, looking at it like I might use it to throw him overboard. Eventually, he reaches out and gives a singular, brief shake.

"Blackwill… That sounds familiar. Do you have siblings?" His eyebrows furrow.

I ignore the pinch in my chest, which thankfully becomes easier with each time it happens. "I'm afraid not." He nods, clearly still mentally rifling through the possible ways he would recognise my name. Honestly, I don't have a clue. It's not common. If we hadn't just been promised solid ground within the day, I might be questioning it alongside him, but it's hard to ignore the persistent twitching in my legs.

Somebody across deck announces that lunch is ready, trading our thoughts of London for the promise of a sated stomach. As we collect our stew and settle below deck, where the hammocks are strung up at night, everyone talks about the island. So far, they believe it to be Doorn, possessor of the town Narrowhaven where many sailors trade during voyages. Out of the three islands, it's most likely we'll find the Lords here – or information about them, at least.

I'm clearly not the only one infected by fanciful thoughts of what it'll be like. Some crew members wish for new clothes and books, spare whetstones and specific Narnian delicacies I haven't heard of before. Others, the single ones, hope for equally single beautiful women. We remain below deck for longer than allowed, though Drinian and Caspian are absent so they can't chastise us for it, suggesting increasingly ludicrous ideas.

When we finally break away to continue working, I think only of Doorn, letting it consume me to the point where physically looking at the island, still so far away, is painful. I retreat to my _(well, Caspian's)_ cabin and nap, dreaming of the possibilities.

* * *

Hours later, I'm woken by someone calling my name. I open my eyes and am met with Caspian's face hovering above mine, making me jump in shock and effectively waking up quicker. "You might want to look outside." He says simply, smiling.

_We're close_, I realise. I stand and race up the steps, barging through the door leading out to the deck, gasping when I see the view. Drifting absentmindedly to the railing, I stare in amazement at the island in front of me, so sudden and stark it looks like it's been plucked out of thin air.

Sandstone buildings stack high upon one another, spiraling into a towering cone and topped by a formidable grey fortress that casts shadows across half the island. Gravel roads wrap around the buildings like tightly pulled coils of rope, its contents almost spilling out over the sides. It's muted, touched entirely with beige and pewter. While it's not the prosperous fields lined with ripe crops I had imagined, it's hard to be disappointed when it's still the only land I've seen in weeks. Not only that – it's land in another _world._

I turn to Caspian, who followed me outside. "How long until we reach it?" I ask.

Drinian steps up beside him, looking as if he were carved from stone. "You won't be going." When I glance back at Caspian for an explanation, he's pointedly avoiding eye contact.

"Narrowhaven does not look as it should be. We think it would be safer if you stayed on board." He says tentatively. I freeze, looking back toward to island. I know they mean well, and I know I'm the biggest outsider possible here, but that doesn't stop the anger that sparks to life in my chest. I bite my tongue and try to control the flames licking my throat, desperate to get out. I am _not_ staying on this boat.

Distantly, I register a crash as two crew members drop a stack of oars onto the deck. Drinian steps away to yell at them and Caspian wastes no time in stepping closer. "Amber, say something." He puts a hand on my arm and leans down to try and catch my eye, currently trained resolutely on the floor.

"Caspian," I begin through gritted teeth, trying to stay calm. "I thank you for what you've done for me, but you are not my King and I do not take orders from you." At that I meet his eyes, trying to look as serious as I feel. "I'm not staying on this boat." His face tenses, eyes flicking to Drinian as a muscle tenses in his jaw. I force myself to stand strong while he opens and closes his mouth in conflict, eventually pressing his lips together and nodding.

"Fine. You can join us, but you stay by the boats until we know if it's safe or not." He sighs. I can't help but cheer, grinning so wide my cheeks hurt.

"Thank you!" I sing, squeezing his hand between mine in gratitude. Caspian flashes me a quick smile, his eyes softening, before going to tell Drinian about the change. I feel only slightly guilty when I see him brace himself for the conversation.

* * *

Thankfully, we're set to leave within the hour. I busy myself with attaching a scabbard to my hip, inserting a newly sharpened cutlass and fastening a leather tunic over my chest; though it's hard to take the preparation seriously – I feel like I'm dressing as a pirate for a costume party, playing make believe with friends. Below deck I speak to Fiedan, a crew member who got his shirt caught on a wickedly sharp nail protruding from the wall that morning which effectively tore it beyond repair. He graciously gives it to me, allowing me to cut a sliver off and gather my hair into a ponytail, using it for a ribbon.

When I'm ushered on deck, I stop short seeing the longboat we're travelling to the island in. It's currently suspended in the air, parallel to the ship beside the gap in the railing. I watch as Lucy steps confidently off the ship and into the boat, which rocks unsteadily with her presence. Forcing myself to remember that entering that boat will take me to solid ground, I step up beside it.

There's a gap between them, reminding me of the space between a train and its platform – and the ominous black pit that separates them. I can't decide which is worse; The space of solid darkness and the fear of the unknown, though reason dictates the floor is near and in the seconds after the train has arrived it did not, in fact, transform into a gaping wide void, or the space I'm faced with now, mercifully bright and beautiful, but showcasing a 30ft drop to the ocean. I'll decide later.

I reluctantly bridge the gap and force myself to stay calm as the longboat sways worryingly. I think to the pirate ship rides at amusements parks, packed in with no seatbelt as you rock almost vertically to the ground, and feel sick. I never liked those rides. I keep my eyes firmly rooted to the sky as Edmund, Reepicheep, Eustace, Caspian and Drinian board, swallowing a nervous yelp every time we move and taking reassurance in tracing my hand over the intricate pattern of a lion and the sun on my swords hilt. Then, we're sailing.

My anticipation intensifies as I watch the island grow with each passing minute, looking even more intimidating from this close to the ocean. We bump against an empty port, faced with a wide strip of dusty stone which curves around the side of the island to the left and twists behind a wall to the right. Caspian offers me a hand out of the boat, for which I thank him.

When he lets go, I sway up the few steps to the path and almost fall immediately back down, caught at the last second by Caspian. My body feels light and unsteady, everything in view swimming in and out of focus as if riding a vicious current in my head and the floor feels wrong. Unusual. As if instead of stone it were a thick feather mattress. Beside me, still holding my forearm, Caspian chuckles. "What's happening?" I ask, unsuccessfully keeping the worry out of my voice.

"You've lost your land legs."

"I can't have them and my sea legs? Only one?" He laughs.

"It gets easier with time." I wait for the island to still in my sight, before straightening and attempting to walk forward.

Everything tips to the right and I stumble, steadying myself with my hands on my knees. "How long will this last?" I ask.

"Could be minutes, maybe a few hours."

"Sometimes it's days." Supplies Marco, unhelpfully. I reply with a simple thumbs up.

"Where is everyone?" Asks Lucy. We all quiet and tune in to the island, but all that can be heard is the hush of the water, our footsteps scuffing the ground and a distant bird cry.

"Reepicheep, stay here with Drinian's men and secure the place. We'll head on. If we don't come back by dawn, send a search party." Caspian says, removing his crossbow from its holster and heading into the unknown depths of the island.

I stumble my way to the platform beside the port steps, sitting down roughly and trying to breathe with a rhythm until I no longer feel like vomiting. It works for the most part. But I know the sickness will return when I stand again.

From this low down, I can't see anything unusual on the island. Only the tips of the buildings that seem to raise themselves like the roots of a tree from the one below it, but I imagine from the top of the island it must be a stunning view. To be able to view the layout of the island perfectly, the collection of roofs splayed out like pebbles on a beach, islanders strolling the streets and hanging out washing, living non-assuming lives. I could spend years up there, watching the lives of others unfold, blanketed in a quiet not weighed with fear or despair.

Though I think I'm the only one enjoying it. The others are busy patrolling the area, checking the few concealed areas there are and never straying their hands from their swords. The ruckus of life at sea had its moments of comfort, which grew more frequent as time went on, but undisturbed quiet is an underappreciated gift, one I delight in whenever the opportunity arises. I sit there for a while, undisturbed, eyes always drifting up to the island's peak. One of them would be a public building, surely? Though it's high, it doesn't necessarily look far, or complicated to reach. I could just… slip away for a while. Explore. Appreciate the steady ground once I have my land legs back.

I look around at the crew. Nobody's watching me, all caught in their own conversations or stretching or admiring the view. Standing, still unsteady but more manageable, I inch my way to the left of the island and down the path that curves around the edge. Going a different direction from where Caspian, Edmund, Lucy and Eustace (why he's allowed the privilege of exploring and I don't is beyond me) was an easy decision to make – if I'm caught, I doubt any excuse would suffice.

The crew disappear from view around the edge of the towering wall that encases the town, and I finally turn to survey my options. The path splits into two, one continuing to brush against the sea, void of any barriers to prevent an untimely fall, and the other leading to an inviting stone archway branching from the wall and connecting with a bland building that lines the seafront. I choose the archway, reveling in the crunch of sand dusting the floor as I walk.

I'm led into a small courtyard as dull as everywhere else, the surrounding buildings tall enough to block out the sunlight, leaving the isolated space in shadow. Everything is just a little bit too dirty, a little bit too out of place. It has the air of being woefully unloved. Benches long overdue for a repaint, or complete replacement, bordering a worn stone fountain, left so dry that even the weeds lacing the cracks have withered. The buildings are void of decoration, copycat grey blocks that lack the individuality of a business and the warmth of a home. I try not to read too much into the hastily bordered windows and move on.

Through a few narrow streets, each as empty as the last, I find the cleanest stoop I can find outside another desolate building and rest. My legs are still shaky, in constant anticipation for the floor jerk up or down and unwilling to accept that it won't happen. I centre my thoughts solely on positive ways to view my current situation, trying to ease the weight of disappointment in my stomach.

1: I'm on land not apart of the United Kingdom for the first time in my life.

2: There's no war here.

3: Though dull, I can take inspiration for future pieces while here.

4: I'm not on the boat.

5: After two weeks of rarely being alone, the solitude is more welcome than ever.

I keep the list repeating in my head until I feel optimistic enough to stand and continue exploring, no longer expectant of fresh fruit or meat waiting around the corner.

There can be beauty in anything if you look hard enough. How the roots of a malnourished maple tree snake like spindly fingers through stone tiles, the sombre beauty of a dead flower, its pollen staining its wooden container, or the open possibilities that arise from an eroded statue, able to be anything you want to see within its blurred form – even if that thing is an elephant in a top hat standing on its hind legs.

When I apply my surroundings to art, it becomes easier to love. I've always wanted to try a mixed media piece, maybe I can start one of Narrowhaven; A gaping street, stretched wide in a weary yawn, lined with a mixture of stone and cinder buildings, decorations sparse and paint peeling. A march of leafless trees down the centre. I could mix my paint with sand or gravel for the ground, charcoal to capture the thickness of the shadows clinging against the walls and watercolour for the washed-out shades that drape over the entire area like a grimy glass window.

Bells ring in the distance. I startle, hand instinctively going towards the hilt of my sword. A beat of silence. Then, a scream. My mind splits in two with indecision – I should help, I'm armed and whoever it was is in definite danger. On the other hand, my sword skills are still weak, and it could be a group of people performing an ambush, in which case I'm better off returning to Drinian and having him organise a rescue. Before I decide, I'm racing down the street trying to find where I emerged from.

Each street is indistinguishable from the next, an unforgiving maze shrinking me to the size of a mouse caught in an overly elaborate trap. Shadows morph into cruel, hulking shapes waiting to latch onto me with hands of obsidian, the dust I kick up as I run whispering warnings in my wake. I hear voices in the distance, a mixture of guttural screams and cruel laughter. I stop. My head is reeling, the ground refusing to still itself as I lean against a wall and crawl towards the edge.

The street ends abruptly, opening out into wide stretch of undisturbed stone, at least four times the size as the courtyard I passed through earlier. At the end of it, leaving a set of ornate brass doors so irreconcilable to their surroundings, are a group of men dressed in elaborate layers of fine silk and patterned fabrics and holding four prisoners – Lucy, Edmund, Eustace and Caspian. I clamp a hand over my mouth as to not scream and watch in horror as those holding Lucy and Eustace depart to the left of the doors while Caspian and Edmund are hauled to the right. As far as I can tell, they're all shouting. _I need to find Drinian_, I think desperately.

I step away from the wall, my eyes unwilling the leave the horrific scene unfolding before me and try to gather enough courage to run. Before I can turn around, a hand clamps itself over my mouth and another grabs at my waist to pull me flush against a body behind me. A strangled scream escapes my throat, drowned out by a deep, rasping chuckle I feel vibrating against my back. He removes the cutlass from my scabbard. I try to cringe away but his hold is firm, the rancid smell of his unwashed hand overwhelming me to the point of tears.

He pushes me out into the open of the square, roughly grabbing my wrists and shackling them behind my back before hauling me forward by the shirt. The collar is pulled tight against my throat, cutting off the air I would have used to yell. "Got another one!" He cheers gleefully.

Another scream, so raw as if it were torn from the soul itself, echoes through the empty space. I twist, scrabbling for purchase against the floor as my capturer continues to drag me like a sack of potatoes and search. My eyes meet Caspian's. He screams again, the same gut-wrenching call that feels like my own throat has been shredded by a whetstone and launches himself away from the man holding his chains. Two more thieves rush to help, forcing back his shoulders and pushing him forcefully down a narrow alley.

A man strolls casually up to me, dressed in flowing sheets of emerald, threaded through with golden starbursts. His mouth twitches upwards in a smile, his eyes raking over me. "Good job." He says lightly. "She can go to market." I'm wrenched across the space and down so many twisting streets that I can't keep track of the path we follow, eventually thrown into a cell with Eustace and Lucy. There are already two other women in the cell, huddled into corners and staring fretfully at us as if we were the enemies and not prisoners like them.

The bars slam shut. I slump onto the floor, Caspian's scream still echoing in my head.


	6. Chapter 6

We're silent for a long time. Like me, Lucy collapses to the ground against the opposite wall and keeps her eyes trained on the floor, eyes unblinking. I think she's trying not to cry. Eustace, for once, is speechless. He shifts nervously on jittery legs by the bars, looking out to the empty stone room free of any decoration bar from a window we can't see out of and a broken chair, its disconnected forth leg left on the seat. There's a weight on my chest, so heavy that I might as well have been crushed underneath the Dawn Treader, as I properly process this situation.

_"She can go to market."_ He had said. Call me crazy, but I doubt I'll be hand-picking fresh fruit tomorrow morning. Normal markets can't buy the fabrics they wore, or the jewels. I huddle my knees against my chest and bury my head between them, trying to stay as calm as possible. If I cry or scream, I don't know if these people will try to help me or they'll end up doing the same, turning us into a cage of distressed monkeys at a zoo. It doesn't help knowing we'll probably be paraded as such tomorrow.

"What do we do now?" Eustace splutters. I guess I should have appreciated the quiet while it lasted, but it's good to hear someone, even him, voice one of the many questions rolling through my head. Lucy looks up, dejected.

"I don't think there's anything we can do."

"That's ridiculous! There's an entire ship cre– " Lucy leaps up and clamps a hand over his mouth before he can finish. Eustace squirms away, apparently enough of a germaphobe to avoid contact even with his cousin.

"What if they're listening? Drinian and Reepicheep will be organizing a search party any minute now, look!" She whispers, removing her hand and pointing at the window in our cell, too high up for any of us to peer through and the wall below it worn so smooth that we can tell countless others have already scrabbled for the chance. What we can see however, is the barest tip of the sun rapidly setting, leaving a deep blue sky in its wake. Dusk.

"How long do we wait?" Lucy pauses, staring at the window. She turns to Eustace, but glances at me too.

"As long as it takes for them to get us." She stands straighter, spine rigid with faith and a warning to not doubt her, or by extension, the crew. I nod and look down again, cheek tipped against my legs as my eyes scrape over the stone beyond our bars. Once again, I mentally list the positives.

1: I'm with Lucy, who has experience in Narnia.

2: A group of merchants must be inexperienced with sword fighting compared to the Dawn Treader's crew.

3: The crew are a family who wouldn't leave anyone behind.

4: This would make an interesting book if I live through it.

Everything else I file behind a heavy door in my mind, chained so the innumerous worries won't break through and bury my measly optimism.

Lucy sits beside me. "Were you alone?" She whispers.

"Yes. I snuck off." She nods, satisfied.

"Where did they take Caspian and Edmund?" I ask through a lump in my throat. The worst possibilities sneak into view, teasing me as if they were a brash puppet show.

"The dungeons." My shoulders slump in relief. Nothing too bad can happen if they're locked away, unless that cage also contains a feral lion, which I heavily doubt. "They're going to sell us as slaves." She adds. Her eyes are drowned in fear, any previous hope diminished by the unspeakable possibilities that wait for us come morning.

I manoeuvre my hands the best I can around her shoulders. Before they threw me in the cell, they reshackled my arms in front, most likely so that I wouldn't dislocate my shoulder with the way they were stretched backwards. I wouldn't be a very good slave in that state. Lucy rests her head on my shoulder. "They're not going to sell us. We've got Drinian coming for us. And Reepicheep, and Marco, and Tavros. Who's going to stop Tavros from getting us, eh?" She laughs briefly. Their names bring an unexpected level of comfort. I hold them close to my heart as I turn to the window and watch the sky darken, eventually drifting into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

_Bang!_

I jump, thrown forcefully from sleep and slide ungracefully onto my side on the filthy floor. Thankfully, my chained hands are no longer hanging around Lucy's neck. She must have moved them to curl into a ball in the corner. A second later, two men with copper skin and jet-black hair stride into the room carrying five bowls between them. They unlock a hatch set in the bars and slide them through before locking it again and leaving. They don't say a single word but fix their deep, bottomless eyes on each of us in turn; I imagine a price stamped to our foreheads – we're not even people anymore.

The food they bring us is a questionable grey-brown mush. I gag with each spoonful, and by the fifth I give up and slide it far away from me. One of the women who had been brought here before we were snatches it up immediately, finishing it in seconds. I hope that when we get out of here, as I know we will, we can free them too.

A while later, four merchants enter the room. Two of them are holding long, thick chains that clink as they walk, another unlocks the bars with a busy ring of keys and the forth stands by the exit holding two swords. No opportunity for an ambush, then. "UP!" The one who unlocked the bars and has now dragged them open enough to fit through one person orders. When I stand, I take a small measure of comfort in the fact that the floor is finally steady beneath my feet and my head clear of any lingering dizziness.

The merchant reaches through and grabs one of the women by her sleeve. She yelps, shaking as he pushes her to the men with the chains, linking her shackles to them. One by one, we're removed from the cell and attached to the weighted metal, all strung together in a line. I'm the last to leave, and the hand that pushes me through is low on my back. _Very_ low and dares to go lower in the second before I scrabble from his reach. My entire body tenses and it takes every ounce of self-restraint I have not to turn around and throttle him with my shackles. Instead I dig my nails into my palms so hard they bleed and take grim pleasure in the pricks of pain, which currently feels like the only thing I own. The only thing I can call mine.

We shuffle out of the room and through a bleak maze of stone corridors, occasionally having the metal scrape against our skin as we're tugged to hurry up. Down a route that's as complicated and twisted as the way we arrived, we eventually arrive in an open square.

The sun is high and bright, unkindly mocking our situation with its inappropriate shine. This place should be grey. Cold and unforgiving with a sky of dense rainclouds and rumbling thunder. Instead it looks closer to the charming ideas I dreamt of before, buildings soaking in the warm golden glow that miraculously lessens the impression of an unloved and abandoned home the space radiated yesterday. Men walk around in flowing robes of every colour, flaunting their wealth that is undoubtedly paved with bloodshed. They assemble platforms and tables, but soon we're whisked off again across a downward slope, at the end of which I can see the sea.

It appears to be the same port we arrived at. I now recognize that the path we travel down is the same way Caspian, Lucy, Edmund and Eustace chose yesterday – but our boats are gone. The four longboats we had tied to the posts have been replaced with ones of a lower, thicker build and the horizon is empty of the familiar purple mast. Dread trickles in slow at first, carving an ice-cold path down my spine. I shiver and the bonds around my wrists seem to weigh heavier than before.

We approach a slanted wall, a row of prisoners already chained to it by their wrists and soon we're forced to the ground and given the same treatment. My heart beat quickens, and I try to look around as casually as I can, searching desperately for a sign that we haven't been abandoned. It wouldn't happen. It couldn't. Caspian and Edmund were taken too, and it's impossible to believe for a second that if they had been rescued Edmund would dare to leave without Lucy. It's unimaginable. I hope, foolishly (but fuelled by his frantic yelling yesterday), that Caspian thinks similarly with me.

The island sparks with uneasy life, an undeniable expectancy threading everyone together as they move through the streets in groups, watching those around them in suspicion. In the distance I hear wheels crunching over gravel and an anguished scream. A cart rolls around the far end of the island, filled with villagers frozen in fear, forcing everyone on the street to cling to the walls or run clear off. Sprinting behind it is a man, his desperation so clear it's painful. "ELAINE!" He screams, throat hoarse. A nearby merchant punches him in the jaw and sends him careening to the hard ground. "I'LL FIND YOU!" He calls after the cart as it travels through an archway and past us, stopping at the port.

I watch in fretful anticipation as each passenger is hauled onto one of the longboats, counted by a broad man cloaked in red. He waits until the cart is empty and marches over to us, each step seemingly magnified with dark purpose. I hope I'm imagining the floor quaking with each step he takes. My body instinctively shrinks in on itself, shaking as I push my knees into my chest and curve my back to enclose them, desperately trying to look as insignificant as possible.

His head is decorated with a thick stripe of midnight hair down the centre of his skull, each half patterned with elaborate red and black imagery of weapons woven through vines. On his shoulders are golden pads carved into the heads of serpents, forked tongues of chainmail rolling down to his wrists where they link to gauntlets embedded with silver coins. With his red robes, alarmingly more vibrant than those of the other merchants, and obsidian eyes, he reminds me of the Devil.

The blood pounding in my ears drowns out the surrounding sounds as the Devil scans the line of prisoners. He takes a deliberately measured step forward and I, along with several others, flinch. Within the depths of his thick beard, I see his mouth twitch with a smile. The next time his eyes pass languidly across us, he stops on the woman next to me; she immediately begins to shake, chains rattling as she holds her hands up in a prayer. He strolls over to her, relishing her fear, before hoisting her up by her wrists. She cries out, feet barely grazing the floor and tears streaming down her face leaving clean trails through the layer of dirt while another merchant, weedy and only as high as the Devil's chest, scuttles over and unlocks her. I stare at him and feel the ice cold dread that licked my spine spread like spiderwebbed glass over my body, seeing the way he looks at her as if she were merely an ant destined to die under his boot. The Devil drags her to the longboat, dropping her in the centre and nodding at the man beside the boat before stepping away.

Nobody speaks as the boats are untied from the posts and pushed out to sea. The locals stop in their paths, horrified but unable to look away, as the previously blue sky darkens. Charcoal clouds descend over the sea bathing the area in shadow, the boats turned to inky smudges. Dancing across the water beneath the clouds is mist. Acid green with an ominous inner glow, curling and rolling as if it were a living being performing for its frozen audience. It bounds to the boats with a disturbing speed and wraps itself around them like a hug.

Then, it's gone. The mist. The clouds. The boats. Vanished like they had never existed. With a resignation that appears routine, the crowd disperses. Through a crack in my defences, all my worries crash through like an unforgiving storm churning every optimism I had to wayward splinters, choking the air from my lungs and replacing the blood in my veins with pure, visceral dread.

_They're dead. These people are murderers and they're going to kill us too. Did the same already happen to the Dawn Treader? Are they all dead? Caspian, Edmund - are they gone too? What if we're stuck here as slaves? I'll be trapped. I'll lose my humanity. Lucy and Eustace are kids, they can't go through this. _

_What do I do?_

I choke. The air is gone from my lungs, morphing itself into frozen hands that clutch my heart and circle my throat, getting tighter and tighter and tighter –

"Amber! Amber look at me. We're okay. Amber, please. Please he's going to notice!" I hear Lucy plead, her voice muffled from its place above the sea I'm drowning in. I struggle for breath, each inhale a measly wisp, buffering like a stuck vinyl. From my right, Lucy awkwardly takes my hands in hers and squeezes. The pressure is grounding. I look to her and watch as she breathes deep, encouraging me to do the same. My chest heaves in protest, determined to starve my lungs of oxygen, but I force myself through. I check in with my senses to further solidify my current reality. I'm on land. I'm sat on the floor. The stone is cold but it is not the ocean. I'm not drowning. The air is dusty and dry. It's not wet. I'm not drowning. I'm not drowning. I'm not drowning.

My eyes flick to Eustace who snaps his head to the port in panic. I follow his sight to the Devil – the man who's currently on his way back to us. I stop breathing completely, looking to the floor and wiping my eyes of the stray tears as quickly as I can. I force a long, slow breath out, driven back to sanity by the fear I feel when I look at the Devil. _Be unnoticeable. Be insignificant. Be calm_, I tell myself.

He walks by without another glance. This time when I exhale, I'm joined by the remaining prisoners who all stare at his retreating form with the same horror I know is echoed across my own face.

A glint catches my eye. A man in a simple navy cloak, a peasant's attire, strides by with a reserved confidence. Concealed beneath his robe is a sword, the handle of which is gold and crafted to resemble the fragile structure of a bird's nest.

A design we had on the Dawn Treader.

A design that was _made_ for the Dawn Treader, a unique pattern courtesy of Mr Diesmich.

I don't want to get my hopes up. Well, I do, but I shouldn't. I do not doubt that the depth to which evil has claimed this island for its own is far deeper than what it would take to wipe out a ship's crew and claim their weapons and resources for their own, though I'm unwilling to explore just how firmly corruption has sunk its teeth into this place by finding out what else they're prepared to do beyond that.

Unfortunately, I'm about to get a taste of it. Merchants descend from the open square and deliberate over which of us to take with them. After a few minutes, I'm being hauled up on unsteady legs along with Lucy, Eustace, a woman dressed in a lilac dress and a faun. I try to ignore the watchful eyes we pass on the way there and how their gazes seem to burrow underneath my skin like an unmitigable itch.

When we reach the square, I can't help but feel faint, as if the devastatingly heavy reality of the situation is only just nestling itself into my brain now I'm in the position to see it stretch out like a play. An ornately gold chair rests behind a raised platform, decorated with a plush cream cushion currently occupied by the emerald man from the day before. _"She can go to market."_ I wouldn't consider myself a violent person. Having been unfortunately stuck with some for my younger years, and later wanting to avoid having my mental wellbeing plagued by war fatigue, I've strayed from that path. However… I wouldn't mind using some of my newfound sword skills to bring that vile creature to his knees.

A crowd of men mill around the space, muttering in groups as they assess us. It's curious how eyes seemingly of the same colour can have wildly different impressions on a person. The slave traders, for example, have devious blots of black set deep into weathered faces; the idea of me reaching out and smudging them like ink, having them spread across their socket and transforming their faces into those of demons doesn't seem impossible. If anything, it would suit the canine grins and gravelly voices. Then there's Caspian. His eyes, though the same deep, brown-black as the men here, offer an inexplicable comfort that I can only relate to the feeling of having an indulgent hot chocolate at the end of a long day. I hope I can survive long enough to see them again.

I'm hoisted up by my shoulders and onto the platform by a man in burnished gold. I try to manoeuvre my legs the best I can and succeed in landing a swift kick to his shin, making him swear in a language I'm unfamiliar with. My reward is the briefest rush of satisfaction and a burning pain across my wrist, so sudden that it makes me jump back and hiss at the pain. The crowd laughs. I look down to my forearm and see an ugly red welt develop on the skin below my shackles, the now red-faced slave trader brandishing a cane. He turns to the crowd and smiles wide. "Do I hear 50?" He gives the silence only a second to fester. "Come on now, she's not dangerous. A bit of training and she'll be as good as anything!"

"80!" Somebody yells. The crowd thickens, mostly men in cloaks but wary families fold themselves against the far walls, watching on. I can't tell if they're watching out of pity, relief that it's not them up here, or fascination. I'm not sure which is best.

"100!"

"140!"

"Sold, 140!" A slab of chalk is dropped over my neck as I'm removed from the platform and put beside a long table behind it. I didn't even see who called out. As I scan the crowd, hope taps me on the shoulder.

_Is that… Is that Fiedan?_

_It is!_

_Wait. Kiers? Talos?_

_Marco?_

_It's them. They're here!_

I concentrate all my energy into not grinning like a lunatic. I highly doubt that's the typical response to being sold like a cheap ornament and I'm certainly not about to ruin their plan when lives are on the line. We only have one shot at this. I can see that much. At the front of the crowd is the figure in the navy robe and from my position I can see the bottom half of his face – rigidly square and tight-lipped. _Oh Drinian, how I've missed you in these past 16 hours. _

Lucy is dropped beside me. I try to subtly draw her attention to the crowd, which I can now see is half full of our men. She scans them as I did, eyebrows raising in a moments surprise before she schools her expression, though her shoulders tense as she stands straighter. How we're going to help fight our way out of this while chained, I have no idea. But we will.

Up high, I hear a door bang open. I turn instinctively and repress a sigh of relief when I see Caspian and Edmund being escorted across a wooden balcony that overlooks the market square with no apparent injuries. I would have thought they would try to fight their way to freedom using as much force as necessary and suffer the consequences, but we're lucky. Their presence is fuel for the fire of hope burning to life in my chest, growing steadily as I watch the crowd shift. Eustace is on the stand, drawing no bids, when Drinian steps forward.

"I'll take them off your hands. I'll take them all off your hands!" He throws his hood back, Reepicheep immediately launching from his shoulder and onto the auctioneer which sends the man spinning like a dog chasing its tail. A Narnian cry crests the crowd like a thundering wave as the crew of the Dawn Treader shed their disguises and toss them over confused merchants, launching into battle.

I run right, no destination in mind but merely unwilling to be a statuesque sideliner and get immediately cut off by the man who hauled me out of the cell this morning. Without thinking, I twist behind him and throw my hands over his head, yanking the chains against his neck until he splutters and flails. When I see him reaching for the cutlass holstered at his hip, I kick the back of his knee and detach myself, spinning ungracefully across the stone as he stumbles forward. When I steady myself, my shoulder hits something hard. A hand shoots out and grabs my elbow, adding pressure I already know will bloom bruises in the shape of fingertips. He bares his yellow teeth and leans in, head snapping back harshly when I launch my free arm into his nose, awkwardly trying to angle it so that the shackle does the damage. I stomp onto his foot for good measure, but his clutch on my arm is like a vice and together we fall backwards into one of the tables, collapsing it under our combined weight.

My shoulder throbs and my lungs are empty of air, shards of wood poking into me from all angles. The man holding me tries to free his arm from the rubble, the other still clutching mine, so I bring my leg up and attempt to kick him in the stomach. My foot barely nudges him but gives him more incentive to shuffle his left arm free and bring it to my neck. This time I bring both my legs up, knees as far into my stomach as they'll go, before pushing with all the strength I can muster. The grip on my throat loosens enough for me to yank my head backwards and free completely. Then, I bite him. He screams as I sink my teeth into his palm, trying not to breath in in case I retch, and tries to pull away. I fight instinct and bite harder until he lets go of my arm and tries pulling at his wrist to free his mangled hand. I let go, spitting blood, and roll out of his reach so I can crawl to relative safety. There's a stinging in my side where I think the splinted table pierced my skin, but I can't focus on that right now.

"Amber, here!" Reepicheep jumps over a fallen, groaning body to me to unlock my chains with his sword. I barely have time to say thank you before he's off again, stabbing ankles with impressive speed.

I stand up and watch Lucy use a giant book to take down two attackers, mentally noting to never cross her. Nearby another merchant is taken down, knocked unconscious with his sword hanging from limp fingers. It's an invitation if I ever saw one. Ducking underneath a wildly swung sword, I reach out and claim the fallen blade, immediately feeling more confident now I'm armed with something other than my flailing limbs. Out of the corner of my eye I see something swooping down from above – no. Not something.

Someone.

Caspian lands spryly on solid ground, releasing the rope he used to swing across like Tarzan and deflects a hit from an attacker. With another hit the man is clutching his nose on the floor, but I'm already running in his direction. _I hope this blade is sharp enough._ "Caspian!" I call. He turns and notes my sword, immediately holding out his arms and pulling the chain taut. I have to swing three times before the links break enough to be fully wrenched apart and when they do, he refuses to take the sword I offer.

"Keep it, I can find another." He insists before chasing after a merchant attempting to flee. I look towards the fight and spend a few seconds appreciating the sheer power of the Dawn Treader crew. Maybe it's the pent-up energy from weeks at sea where the fights have no real stakes, or the depth of the truth in Caspian's early declaration. _"I accept only the best men in my crew."_ We're overpowering the slave traders more with every second, cutting off their escape routes and rendering them immobile.

For a while, I simply watch. I soak in their skill and their bravery and use it to find my own.

Then, I leave the square.

**A/N: I really wanted to get this chapter out on International Women's Day, but I've hit a bit of a slump so it took longer than expected. Nevertheless, I hope you spent the day appreciating the incredible women in your lives (including yourself, if you identify as such). Also, if you're reading this within the first couple of months of when I publish it, go see Captain Marvel in cinemas if you can! It's a wonderful film with a wonderful cast that's being unfairly rallied against by certain groups but deserves all the love and support in the world. Believe me, you won't regret it. **


	7. Chapter 7

People are running through the streets, spurred on by a mixture of fear and confusion. The sounds of metal scraping and the occasional scream is still audible by the port, but these people don't appear willing to discover the context. I don't blame them. While they run by, carrying children and trying to run so fast they fall, they ignore the pleas of those still chained to wall. With each pair of rushed footsteps, the prisoners grow more agitated, pulling so hard at their bonds that thin trails of blood trickle down their wrists and yelling until their throats are hoarse. I run to the end of the line, a skittish faun, and hack at his shackles until they break. He's escaping down the seafront like everyone else within a second of being free.

By the time I've finished breaking them all free, the sounds of battle have ceased, and few locals linger on the streets. Fiedan runs by and begins attaching our longboats to the port, returned to the island by some grinning crew members. The Dawn Treader sits in the distance, a beacon of strength waiting for us to return. "Amber!" I look to the incline that leads to the square, where Caspian is waving for me to join him. I leave the sword behind, it's blunted beyond repair by now - the last set of chains took two full minutes to snap.

When I crest the top, I'm greeted with a truly glorious sight. All the merchants are bound with their own chains and ropes, stripped of their finery's and assembled in three kneeling lines on the floor. The crew patrol the space, removing further accessories and assembling a pile of weapons far from their reach. More islanders have emerged from their hiding to approach the crew, who speak to them calmly. One even points to Caspian, presumably telling the woman that he's the King, to which she clutches her heart in relief.

I can't help it, I start laughing. The entire situation is ridiculously unimaginable, and yet I'm here. _Living_ it. Fighting slave traders on a mythical island alongside minotaurs and fauns and kings, freeing prisoners and watching those who were unfairly taken from their home finally reclaim it back. I'm giddy on glorious relief, soaking in each moment of the aftermath as I would the beautiful sunlight.

"Come with me." Caspian says, nodding to a street that leads further into the island and casually twirling a set of keys around his fingers. On the way out, I grab a sword from the stack.

He says nothing. His face is set in concentration, assumingly trying to navigate us someplace specific rather than a casual stroll around the town, so I stay silent and appreciate the victory.

Eventually we reach a stone door which opens to an immediate staircase. I smile at Caspian and bound up taking the stairs two at a time, loving the solidity of my steps. Not even the tiniest sway! Assuming we're leaving the island today, I need to take in every moment of this, every sure-footed step. Behind me, Caspian sighs. "I thought I told you to stay by the boat." He sounds tired. Strained, as if he's holding back from saying more.

"I thought I told you I don't take orders from you." We reach the top and begin winding through a series of corridors.

Caspian stops abruptly. "You were _kidnapped."_ I stop too, a few paces ahead of him, and grin reassuringly.

"But I wasn't killed! Come on Caspian, I'm fine." I start skipping down the corridor again as an excuse not to look at his downcast face. "I don't regret it!" I call out.

"What if you were?"

"That's not the point. I wasn't, and now it's finished. It's not like it will happen twice so can't we just move on?" He catches up to me, taking a left at a T junction.

"You're really stubborn, you know that?"

"Trust me, I know. But it's not like I asked to be here so I might as well take the chances to do whatever while I can." He catches my eye.

"Like being sold on a slave market?" I can't help but smile, it really has been a bizarre day.

"Exactly."

"How can you be so happy after all that happened?"

"Because we won!" I laugh. "Because I'm not on that stupid boat! I'm walking on stone, real stone! And metal!" I spot the barred wall in the distance, running to it and pressing my forehead against the cool surface.

"You know, those probably haven't been cleaned in a decade." He starts trying different keys in the gate set in the centre of the bars. I turn to press my cheek against it instead, looking at him.

"I don't even care." There are wildly differing types of cold to experience and you don't know how much you miss one until you're cut off from it completely. Though it's not exactly warm on the Dawn Treader, the ocean air still carrying its own bite especially at night, on the days where the sun was particularly generous it was hard to escape. A simple chilled can would have been welcome, pressed against a sweaty arm to leave a trail of goosebumps and a specific relief obtainable by no other means. The sun didn't hold back today and what with the fight in close quarters, the heat rose to an imposing temperature. In here, however, the stone and metal are mercifully cool, and I can almost pretend the bars are a glass of water fresh from the fridge like I had in London.

"I didn't know it would mean so much to you." His voice is soft, contemplative.

"I didn't know either until we saw the island. As soon as I thought about being on land again, it was physically painful not to be." I turn around so my back is pressed against the metal, letting the cold seep through the fabric of my shirt and embrace me.

He finds the right key and throws the gate wide, allowing a frail old man with a beard down to his knees to exit and look between us. "Amber, this is Lord Bern." He says. I recognise the name from the drawings he had shown me from the ship and grin, dipping forward in what I hope is deemed an appropriate bow.

"It's a pleasure to meet you Lord Bern."

He nods distractedly, shuffling down the corridor as if he had never seen it before. For all I know, that could be the case. "Thank you, dear." He mutters, running his hand across the wall.

"Lord Bern, I was wondering if you would become the new Duke of the Lone Islands? We need to prevent the slave traders from gaining power again, and I trust you to succeed." Caspian asks, directing the dazed man down the correct path. I hurry to follow, just catching the end of his humbled acceptance, and walk beside them.

A few turns into the journey out, Lord Bern releases a croaky cheer and shuffles to the edge of a wall with a newfound speed. "Aha! I know this place." He taps the wall where a diagonal white slash has chipped at the stone, then turns to Caspian. "Thank you for your help, Your Majesty, I must go retrieve something for you. Please, do go on. I will find you." We leave, though curious, taking a moment to watch him retreat down the opposite path.

"Which island do we travel to next?"

"We won't be visiting the other Lone Islands, I'm afraid."

"Why not?" Caspian sighs and his next words are hesitant.

"Did you see the mist?" My stomach sinks and my face must show my answer because he nods solemnly.

"The other six Lords tried to discover the source, but they never came back. It's our job to find them now."

"If we find the source and destroy it, does that mean we can save those people too?" He stands to his full height and locks his eyes with mine.

"I won't rest until I do." I nod, trusting his word fully.

"Until _we_ do, Caspian. I want to help."

"Thank you." He smiles, voice rich with emotion.

With that, we descend the stairs and through the door, making our way back to the courtyard. The crowd has thickened in our absence, merchants being escorted out of the area looking sour while the locals watch on with unreserved glee. Already windows are being cleared of their wooden barricades, children weaving through legs and laughing, and a couple walk around with baskets of bread that empty at an alarming rate. I reach them as quickly as I can, snagging a kifli roll dressed in poppy seeds to devour. As I watch the merchants leave, jeered on by those surrounding, I note a significant absence.

Tavros and Marco are standing nearby, enjoying some offered bread, when I join them. "Did either of you see a man in red? His head was painted, and he was wearing gold shoulder pads. He…" I chew the inside of my cheek, the intimidation of his presence still lingering in the back of my mind. "He's bad news." I conclude. They share a glance, then Marco shuffles uneasily.

"We saw him this morning, before the market, but not since then. Drinian sent out a search party but they've had no luck. It's like he disappeared." I nod and watch on. Suddenly, being back on the Dawn Treader sounds _very_ appealing.

Once the square is cleared and word of our triumph spreads, we march to the port to the sound of clapping, cheering and laughing. I look through the crowd and try to remember each and every face I see, securing their joy in a sacred part of my mind to treasure. The father who raises his son on his shoulders for a better view, the couple who embrace each other as if the world was theirs alone, the twin sisters who run alongside us scattering pale pink petals – all of them. In this moment, I feel honoured to walk alongside the Dawn Treader's crew and witness the justice they rightly sought out.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!" A man elbows his way through the crowd, his face pure panic as he runs to Caspian, barricaded off by Drinian. "My wife was taken just this morning. I beg you, take me with you." Caspian nods to Drinian who releases the man and steps into line, allowing Caspian to put a hand on his shoulder and listen with care, face transformed with severe but empathetic lines instead of the smile that stretched wide only moments before. "I'm a fine sailor, been on the seas my whole life."

"Of course. You must." Caspian responds, barely a second later. A part of me thinks he needn't have mentioned his experience to be allowed to board, that Caspian had made up his mind mere seconds after he first spoke out. I wonder if all Kings begin as good men like him, or if this is more him being human than a ruler.

Our new crew member says goodbye to his daughter, leaving with a promise to better their lives in the long-term, and my heart breaks ever so slightly.

We descend the path to the port and are met by Lord Bern holding up an indistinguishable object. "My King!" He calls, stopping opposite Caspian. The crowd are quiet, watching on. "This was given to me by your father, I hid it safely in a cave for all these years." _So that's where he went._ Up close, I can tell that it's a sword – though barely. Its surface has been overrun by pale corals, rendering it rough and unsightly.

"That's not a Narnian sword." Notes Edmund.

"It's from your Golden Age. There are seven such swords, gifted by Aslan to protect Narnia. Your father entrusted them to us. Here, take it. May it protect you." Caspian merely stares at the gift, fingers twitching to take it but an unknown force holding him back. Over time, I've noticed an overtly consistent trait of his; he wears his heart on his sleeve and his expression open and honest. His eyebrows are furrowed and eyes alight with doubt, his cheek a concave where he nervously sucks in air and nods as if to jolt his mind into the right place.

"Thank you, my Lord, and we shall find your lost brothers." There's not a shred of uncertainty in his voice. They share a weighted nod and separate, the crowd once again cheering their thanks as we depart in our long boats. Though I try to, I find it hard to look away from Caspian. He's distant, motions automatic from practice as he rocks along to the rhythm with his head someplace untouchable. My guess is that the reminders of his father and the legacy he built are akin to well performed attacks in a duel, the kind that leave significant aches you remember each time round, and they're beginning to take a toll. While I believe wholeheartedly that he's a good King and, more importantly, a good man, I'd think my declaration of such would fall on deaf ears. Besides, I lack experience when it comes to talk of family. Best not to try.

When we arrive on the Dawn Treader, everyone breaks away to do their set tasks as if it were an ordinary day despite the notable differences. For one, gloriously full baskets of fruit, bread and meat are being transported below deck – much to my stomach's disagreement – for us to have over the next week before they're deemed inedible. The doctor, Chiron, finds himself inundated with mild injuries consisting mainly of shallow cuts as others weave around the makeshift hospital wing to restore the longboats.

Nobody dwells on the events just past, or recreate particular moments (Marco tries, but is swiftly stopped by Drinian before the latter disappears into the office with Caspian), they don't stare longingly at the island as it shrinks into the horizon, movements once again plagued by a steady rocking. Soon enough, all evidence of a disturbance in our two weeks at sea is washed away, all crew members slotting back into their regular routines of mending clothes, drinking, and singing – in that order, for some.

"Well, that was fun." Lucy says lightly as she rests on the railing beside me. I look to her as she flashes me a concerned smile, I guess my grouchiness was showing.

"I can't wait to spend my time trying to find my sea legs _again_, just to lose them at the next island we come to." My stomach feels uneasy in a way I thought I was free from, but apparently not.

"It won't last long. A day at most."

"Here's hoping." I force out as we crest a rudely jutting wave, squeezing my eyes tight until the jolt in my chest passes. To my left, somebody clears their throat.

"King Caspian requests you in his office." Drinian tells me, emotionless as ever.

"Now?" I'm given a swift nod and a turned back as he retreats to the forecastle. I groan, burying my head in my hands. "He's probably still mad that I snuck off."

"I wouldn't be too sure about that." Lucy says, suspiciously casual. When I straighten, she nudges my shoulder. "Go!"

I take a moment outside the door, a rare occasion where there's no one in sight despite the audible evidence of people moving around me. Anticipation clenches my gut, amassed in the last minute by rapid-fire predictions of what I'll find behind the door – each one more ridiculous than the next (including, but not limited to; cooked chicken or a chocolate cake – fantasies courtesy of my stomach – a door to London, courtesy of my brain, and my parents, courtesy of my heart). I knock then enter a moment later.

"What's this about?" I put my hands in my pockets and look around with a forced casualness, trying to spy a clue. Caspian sits on the edge of a long table which dominates the space, stripped down to a simple white poet shirt and brown breeches, void of his usual adornments. From behind his back he reveals a rectangular package wrapped in brown paper and offers it to me, smiling.

_A gift? This isn't what I was expecting_, I think, unwrapping the top. My breath hitches in my throat when I see the leather-bound sketchbook, its cover decorated with braids cut into the material to circle a polished blue stone in the centre. I untie the rope and flick through the thick expanse of blank pages, lovingly running my hands across the luxurious khadda paper stained brown along the edges from the leather dye. Two pencils roll across the wrappings from underneath the stunning book.

"I asked before we left. I'm sorry it's not much." Caspian says quietly.

I blink the tears from my eyes quickly and look up at him. "Caspian – no! It's more than enough. Thank you, truly." I trace the outline of the embedded stone, mind whirling with thoughts of how to fill the pages, all the details I've noted over the past few weeks that I'm now itching to sketch, to feel my mind enter that focused state of mind that renders me untouchable to the outside world.

"Promise me one thing." Seeing him like this, earnest and true and naked of any act he carries around some, feeling so, _so_ achingly real, there's nothing I want to draw more. In fact, I could quite easily fill the notebook with this one image. Again and again and again.

"Anything." I answer, knowing I've never been more honest than that one word.

He smiles, quirking his mouth up to the side. "Draw me at some point."_ Sure. How about a study on the human form?_ I bite my tongue.

"Of course." I smile reservedly.

We descend into a comfortable silence in which I find myself unable to process the reality of the book I can now call my own. It's too beautiful. It's too generous. It's too… much. Guilt begins to gnaw at my joy.

"You got this even after I ran off and got kidnapped?" He steps closer.

"I want you to be happy here. If something, like art, gives you comfort then I will do my best to bring it aboard." I sniffle and carefully wrap the book and pencils back in the paper as if I were tucking a child to sleep before holding it close to my chest.

"I can't thank you enough."

"Can you promise me not to walk off again?" He asks, a familiar teasing tone creeping back into his voice.

"I already promised to draw you, two promises are more than I can handle." He says nothing but raises his eyebrows and stares until I cave. "Fine, I promise to _try _and not walk off again."

"I'll accept it." He grins.

It hits me then why he did this, his reasoning previously lost behind my shock. _I want you to be happy here_. I think to earlier in the day too, when I called the Dawn Treader a stupid boat, and wince.

"I'm not… I'm not completely unhappy here. The people are lovely, and I've had fun, it's just…" I swallow, trying to find the right words. "A difficult adjustment." Ambiguous, but relatively true. It'll do. Though now the adjustment is coming more from accepting that London never made me as happy as the Dawn Treader has, and that I feel more ingrained into the crew than I believed possible – like I was yet another wooden plank in the deck rather than one made of straw or cotton, as I felt before.

"Not to worry, I understand." I nod in thanks and we share a smile. The wise thing to do is to leave, discover the best subject to grace the first page in my sketchbook, but I find myself scrabbling for any reason to stay. I walk to the window, pointing at the slowly disappearing hulk of Narrowhaven.

"A bit different from Brenn, isn't it?" He steps up beside me.

"I'm sorry to disappoint. I'll take you there if I can."

"That's kind of you Caspian, but I should be home before the opportunity arises." _I don't want to be, but do I really have a choice? This place is not my future._ It's growing more painful to remind myself of that. From the starboard window there's a flutter of movement, but when I twist to see it a spike of pain runs through my side making me wince.

"Were you hurt in the fight earlier?" Caspian asks.

"I think so. I kind of fell and broke a table." I reluctantly set my gift onto the bench by the window.

"May I?" He gestures to the bottom of my shirt, leading my eyes to the circle of blood stained through the fabric. I nod, not trusting my voice.

He gently peels the fabric away from my skin, the blood thankfully dry, to reveal a shallow but long gash across my side from where I rolled over the wooden splinters. He hisses between his teeth. "I'll get Chiron." He says, jogging out of the room. They return a few minutes later with a basin of water, a cloth, gauze, a bowl, and a clean shirt.

I hold my shirt up on one side as Chiron cleans the wound, trying to stay still. After a while, Caspian breaks the silence. "You know… I heard you bit one of them." He doesn't pose it as a question.

"He was trying to choke me!" I splutter, the heat rising in my cheeks. That is _not_ a moment I want to remember or have anyone else know of.

"I'm not judging!" He laughs. "It's a strong strategy, really." He holds his hands up in defence.

Chiron chips in, now applying a yellow balm onto the wound. "Sounds as if you could use some dinner, Blackwill. I heard Fiedan saying it would be ready soon."

"Brilliant. I want to erase that memory from my mouth as soon as possible." I grumble, crossing my arms the best I can. There's still a lingering copper taste in my mouth from the experience that an orange, or two, will hopefully extinguish.

A few minutes later, Caspian and Chiron head to dinner while I swap my dirtied shirt for a new cream one before grabbing my book and leaving, my stomach rumbling eagerly. Outside the room leaning against the wall is Caspian. "Are you ready to go?" I try not to be too surprised that he waited.

"Yes, I'm just going to put this in the cabin first." He nods and continues to wait as I enter the room at the opposite of the corridor, laying the package on the pillow and giving it a final loving look before leaving.

We go to dinner in a comfortable silence and say little during the meal, appreciating the gleeful buzz among the crew as we feast on rolls filled with fresh pork and follow with strawberries and ale. Those who participated in the fight on Narrowhaven recount the events to those who stayed on board, embellishing more with every drink. I lean against the wall and watch them joke, content with being a quiet onlooker.

When I drift to sleep that night it's with a light, fuzzy feeling in my head and a smile on my face, arms curled around the book as I dream of what tomorrow will bring.


	8. Chapter 8

I knock my head against the wall and suppress a scream.

_One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven – _

"Somebody looks grumpy." Marco jumps up onto the crate beside me and swings his legs nonchalantly, tilting his head to the side as he assesses me.

I imagine I look far worse than simply grumpy right now. After my sword training session with Caspian this morning, in which I was tested with an increased fervour following the events in Narrowhaven, I found the tightest space on deck where I could slip between some stable crates and the railing and wedged myself there for the day with only my sketchbook and a steadily rising temper for company.

After my third failed attempt at drawing the crow's nest I was ready to rip my hair out. After the fifth I was prepared to cut the bastard down for vengeance. Now, after the seventh, I'm a hairs width away from jumping ship completely and letting the ocean wash away my sense of complete failure. How unstable must I look huddled away in this corner bent over my knees to try and brace the biting wind, hair wild and face red, knuckles turned white as I clutch the book like my life depended on it?

Marco's eyes focus on the book. "Is there something wrong with it? Are the pencils bad?"

"No, no, they're perfect. I'm the problem, I'm out of practice." I grumble, running a hand over the cover in apology. It feels like such a waste to decorate valuable pages with unsightly scribbles but feels equally wasteful to not use it at all. At the very least, my anger towards my non-functional hand is better than several of my other options, like dwelling on issues I should keep buried within the deep recesses of my mind. Marco leans over and plucks it from my hands, flicking through my half-finished sketches.

"These are good!" He says.

I snatch the book back and hold it close to my chest. "They're _rough_." He sighs, watching me as I move to trace the vaguely deckled edges.

"I picked it out, you know." He nods to it and hums in pride. "Caspian was busy being a King, he makes it sound like such a chore…" I roll my eyes, unsuccessfully containing my laugh at the thought of Marco attempting the same role, but the mental image of him tripping over a long, furred cloak is cut short by Caspian emerging onto the deck. Marco's head swings around, eyes narrowing. _Scheming._

Caspian. Me. The crow's nest. Me. Caspian.

He grins.

"Your Majesty!" Marco leaps from the crates and skips to Caspian who pauses mid-stride and smiles.

"Marco! How are you?"

"Fine, fine," He brushes him off. "Can Amber go up the crow's nest?" My heart falters at the thought, eyes drifting to the meagre basket perched high on the mast, suddenly looking more unstable than before. And yet… A spark of excitement, like an electric shock, jolts me into action. I stand up and catch Caspian's attention.

"Do you want to?" He asks.

"Am I allowed?" From what I've seen, not many crew members go up there. Five at most, and that's across a rotary system.

"Of course. If you're comfortable climbing the ratlines, that is?" I follow his sight to the ropes in question.

A lattice of thick, sturdy knots attached to a jutting platform off the side of the ship and secured at the base of the crow's nest to form a large, gridded triangle. I walk to the railing and look into the water – and the parallel drop that awaits me if I make a mistake climbing.

"And if I fall in the sea?"

"I'll fish you out." From over his shoulder, Marco nods enthusiastically.

"How reassuring." I raise an eyebrow and look back over the climb. It's hardly more dangerous than yesterday, is it? I prepare myself with a swift nod and a smile to hold back any lingering reluctance. "After you." I gesture him forward.

Before Caspian can answer, Rhince – the sailor we took on from Narrowhaven – yells as Eustace scrambles onto the deck and knocks over a barrel, banging it in to the unfortunate sailor. Before I can fully process the fact that Eustace is running around, none too carefully, with a sizable kitchen knife, he's already swinging it at Reepicheep; who seems to be having too much fun dodging a blade that matches the length of his body.

I step forward, intent on interrupting as he hops around on the railing as he would any other day. "Shouldn't we step in? Reepicheep could get hurt." I ask, turning to Caspian who watches on with a peculiar grin.

"He's in no danger. Believe me, he's far more fearsome than he looks." I reluctantly turn back to the fight as an onlooker, heart seizing as Reepicheep stumbles back off the railing, only to return a moment later weaving between the ratlines to loom over Eustace's bent form. He swings, kicking the boy with a surprising force to send him crashing into a woven barrel. The crew roar with laughter, torn between watching Eustace pick himself up and Reepicheep who bows as if he'd just finished a two-man play.

"Look!" Lucy exclaims, kneeling to remove a piece of cloth from the barrel that had fallen on its side. It rolls to the left and knocks against the mast, those nearby its opening gasping lightly.

"Gael?" Rhince says, moving forward as if in a trace. A second later a head pokes out from above the barrel – the young girl he left in Narrowhaven. Her hands are shaking as she fumbles to her feet, clinging to her dad's shirt as they embrace.

Drinian strides through, parting the crowd with ease as he hands her an orange with a tender smile. "Looks like we have an extra crew member." _Oh wow_, I think, _he has a soft side_. Rhince strokes her hair and cradles her as if she were glass, his relief a tangible presence I feel wrong being close to. How must it feel to have somebody treat you as if you mattered more than anything in the universe? As if your presence were akin to the best medicine available? I busy myself with righting the fallen barrel as Lucy escorts Gael inside, pushing the questions aside.

People dissolve once again into their smaller groups as I stand alone in the centre feeling more thrown off than I expected to be. I can't shake the image of Rhince's expression from my mind, plastered to every corner in my head and waiting for me in the darkness when I blink. I'm reminded unkindly of London, the missing people posters that layered the street lamps following raids, a new name and a new face smothering the ones beneath it with each passing day, the remnants of those already replaced reduced to an eye or an O in their name until they're covered completely. They seemed to call out, teasing and sickening my stomach with the desperate pleas of help from those who smoothed down the paper that morning, tracing their inked face with a gentle touch, longing for the real feeling of silky hair and soft skin. A sensation kept from me throughout my life. _Look at me. I'm cared for. I have somebody looking for me. I have somebody fighting for me._

_Do you?_

I look away from where he speaks with Caspian and Drinian in low voices, following Eustace's path down to the pantry where he's hopefully returning the knife never to be handled by him again, and eventually to the door Lucy and Gael disappeared through. I take a deep breath and leave to find them.

Lucy's closing the door to Caspian's cabin when I arrive, stopping short when she spots me shuffling awkwardly in the corridor. "Is she okay?" I ask.

She nods and spares another glance at the closed door. "She seems alright, I was just going to get her a drink."

"Should I introduce myself?"

"Well, you will be spending another month or so with her." She laughs lightly.

"Right, yes, of course. I just… I have no idea how to talk to kids."

"Wait until I get back." She pats my shoulder sympathetically, and potentially out of pity too, then leaves.

Anyone below the age of 14 is, to put it lightly, an enigma to me. I can scarcely remember how I acted or how I wanted to be treated then, having repressed most of it. For the most part, all I remember is fighting with other kids and often being bitten or pinched in the process. I don't think that's an option now.

Lucy returns and pauses opposite me. "About the bed –"

"I'll find myself a spare hammock." I jump in. At the very least, I understand that they deserve it more than I do. For one, it's a universally unspoken law that if there's ever spare benefits, be it food, shelter or other, it goes to either the youth or the elders – right now, we only harbor the former. For two, given that I arrived on the Dawn Treader first, it's only fit that they take it now. Hopefully the sounds of thirty others breathing and snoring will drown out the less savory thoughts that creep in at late hours.

"Are you sure?" Lucy presses.

"Of course."

"Thank you." She says graciously before opening the door and ushering me in first.

Gael is sat on the edge of the bed, gently swinging her legs and peeling the orange Drinian handed her. I look to Lucy who nods encouragingly. As I kneel before the bed, Gael watches me with a tilted head. "Hello Gael, I'm Amber." My voice sounds strange. Light but strained, as it were a ribbon pulled taut.

"I saw you in the town. You were staring at the King." From behind me, I hear Lucy laugh and hurry to cover it with a cough. It doesn't work.

Note: Children have no filter. I'll keep that in mind.

I lower my head as I feel a mocking heat crawl up my neck. Do I defend myself? Do I deny? Do I agree? Gael watches me, the picture of innocence, as I go through my options. This isn't even a big deal, I tell myself.

Lucy steps in, sitting on the bed beside her. "Let's keep that between us, shall we?" Gael nods and returns her attention to her orange, offering a slice to us both. A silence thickens between us, permeated by muffled voices and the wind humming against the windows, asking for entrance. What do kids like to talk about? Lucy clears her throat.

"Amber, didn't you have to go do… something?" She says, watching me with a glint in her eye. I play along, ignoring the pathetically sweeping relief the escape brings me.

"Yes! Yes. I do. I'll, um, go." I nod to them both. "Goodbye Gael, Lucy."

I close the door behind me, walk down the corridor, and start hitting my head against the wall.

_Stupid. Thunk. Stupid. Thunk. Stupid! Thunk. _

Note two: Kids say things for no reason.

If Lucy or Marco had said the same, it would have reason. Purpose, and probably of the teasing variety.

_I wanted to make sure he was okay! _

_Mhm. Keep telling yourself that._

I quiet both voices in my head with another smack against the wall and return to the deck.

The lookout is conveniently stepping down from his post for a late lunch when I come out, making my way to Caspian. He frowns when I reach him. "Your forehead's red."

"I hit it against the wall." I wave my hand to dismiss his concern.

"On accident?"

"Not exactly." I rush to change the subject. "So, crow's nest?" He takes a moment, clearly considering whether or not it's worth following up, before nodding and excusing himself for a moment.

I use the time to gaze up where it resides above the sail, but with the clouds moving in the background it looks as if it's going to tip forward and I hurry to reign in the courage that scuttles away at the sight. Caspian returns swiftly with a brown leather pouch slung over his shoulder moves to the edge of the starboard ratlines. "I'll go first, show you how to get up."

He grabs the outer rope with his left hand and raises his left leg high on the railing, pulling himself upwards and swaying right until he comes to rest against the width of the ropes, climbing to the farthest edge so I have space to do the same.

I get into position, holding to the rope so tight my knuckles turn white and I feel the rough strands scrape against my palm and step first onto a box perched along the edge of the boat – I have no doubt that if I went straight for the railing my foot would slide off and I would crash onto the floor, a fate I would quite like to avoid. Already I feel unsteady, the railing now only reaching my ankles so if I were to slip there would be nothing stopping me from falling overboard. I look to Caspian who smiles reassuringly. I raise my left foot to the railing and have my right dangle in the air as I turn, guided by Caspian's hand in mine to rest against the lines like a spider in its web. They wobble gently with my weight but it's hardly more dangerous than boarding the longboat. I can do this.

"Now we climb." Caspian says, bringing the hand entwined with my own one rung higher as we scale the ropes to the top. While the crow's nest is mostly secured with thick wooden bars, the top of the ratlines is presented with a hole large enough for a person to fit through, replicated on the opposite side. I slide through and stand, immediately assaulted with a fierce wind that sends my loose hair whipping across my face.

I laugh and feel the wind steal it away for itself, lost in the rush pounding in my ears. It's brutal but brilliant, stinging my cheeks but bringing with it a sense of unreserved freedom. Up here I feel separate from everything. Every worry. Every doubt. Every memory. Like I can cast off my existence and watch it blow out over the water, carried to where I never have to see it again.

For a while I just stand there, letting the wind claim me until I'm short on air. Reluctantly, I sit down beside Caspian and cross my legs, the breeze sedated by the railing. From his leather pouch he reveals an orange, cutting it in two and offering me half. I chew quietly for a while, soaking in the moment and enjoying the simple pleasure of watching the sun greet us between parted clouds.

"Are there any hammocks free?" I ask after a while.

"What?"

"Lucy, Gael and I can't all fit in one bed." I watch as a crease forms between his eyebrows. His thinking face.

"I'll see if Drinian could move from his quar –"

"I'm fine with a hammock, Caspian."

"Are you sure? It hardly smells like fresh flowers in there."

I smirk. "Considering you've been in there for the past few weeks, I'd expect as much." He laughs and shakes his head.

"I'm sure there's a spare for you."

"Thank you."

"If you tell me why you hit your head against the wall." _Tricky bastard_, I curse silently. I try to plead with a look, but he simply stares back with predetermined triumph.

I sigh and hit my head against the mast poking through the centre of the crow's nest. "I was annoyed. I tried talking to Gael, but I have no idea how to speak to kids."

"You're not the only one."

"You too?"

"Oh, no. I'm great with kids. I meant Fiedan." I turn to him and nudge his shoulder with my elbow, rolling my eyes in the process. He simply laughs.

"Do you not have siblings?" I tense, slowly chewing an orange slice before answering.

"No. I think if I did, I would have fought my way off this ship kicking and screaming to get back to them."

"Now that would surely draw Aslan's attention." He muses. Aslan… So many people have uttered that name in passing. But Caspian makes it sound as if he's on the boat which, so far, I haven't considered. No one has introduced themselves as an Aslan. "Are you alright?" He asks.

"I've heard so many of you mention that name, but I just shrugged it off. Who is he?" My eyes flick to the deck down below. Is he there? A dagger disrupts my view. I turn to Caspian in confusion as he points to the hilt shaped like the head of a roaring lion.

"That's Aslan." He points to the buckle on his chest, connected to his currently empty scabbard. It too shows a lion. "This is Aslan." Then he removes a compass from his pocket and hands it to me. One side is decorated with the sun and on the other – "So is this." A lion.

"He's… a lion?" I think I would notice if a lion was onboard.

"He created Narnia." Well, it's certainly not impossible. If this journey has taught me anything so far, it's that nothing is.

"Have you met him?" His eyes grow distant.

"Yes, years ago. When Lucy and Edmund were last here and I became King." He swallows and I can see that it's a struggle for him to mentally return to the present. He turns to me and glances between my eyes. "You will too."

"Are you sure?"

"If anyone knows why you were brought here, it's Aslan."

"Here I was thinking all the lions were just because Narnians really liked cats." He laughs briefly before we collectively descend into a thoughtful silence. I should ask for that story sometime, the one he's clearly trapesing through right now. There's something about that name, _Aslan_, that evokes calm with the briefest utterance. No wonder his image is everywhere; the wheel, the sail, the lamps, the walls, the bedposts. Even the door handles. Do they feel his presence within every engraved mane?

My eyes lazily trace the horizon as I imagine what it would be like to meet him. I've never seen a lion in person before. How big will he be?

Hold on.

I stand abruptly and stare out at sea, noting Caspian rising too. "What is it?"

"I think it's land." I rub my eyes and check again. A measly dot, but that's as good as a sprawling golden castle at this point. Beside me, Caspian checks his compass.

"Our first step beyond the Lone Islands. Would you like to do the honours?"

"Can I?"

He gestures me forward. "The stage is yours." I lean over the railing and wait for a break in the wind. Then, I yell.

"LAND HO!" We grin and watch as the crew scramble to the railings, looking over to see for themselves. Drinian and Tavros work on adjusting the wheel so we're pointing right at it and I start to bounce excitedly as the news spreads, more people making their way to the deck and assembling the fixture we attach the longboats to.

"We should get there by tonight. It will be late but there's no time to waste." Caspian says, his eyes alight with wonder as he looks out to our new destination. What must it feel like, knowing you're about to explore fresh land in a kingdom you can call your own? Before I can ask, he's ducking below the railing and back onto the ratlines, waiting for me to join.

I do so, albeit extremely tentatively, disliking how I have no choice but to look down as I find purchase on the ropes.

When we reach the deck, Caspian is drawn away by Drinian, the latter giving me a look easily interpreted as 'don't follow'. Instead, I join Marco and Edmund sat against the stern. We chat idly for the afternoon, Marco and I occasionally offering Edmund help when it comes to descaling Lord Bern's sword, gifted to him by Caspian yesterday, to which he declines each time.

At dinner there's less talk about what we may find than there was when we approached Narrowhaven, presumably due to how wrong we were with our guesses then.

It's only when the grey clouds make way for a garishly pink sunset that we're close enough to the island to see more than just a bulky, indistinguishable shape. It's far flatter than Doorn, a large stretch of sand and grass that reaches farther than we can determine, unwaveringly still.

"If the Lords followed the mist east they would have stopped here. We'll spend the night on shore." Caspian tells Drinian. They're on the forecastle by the wheel, almost directly above where I hide beside the staircase leading to it, I can just see the glint of the spyglass they're using when I look up.

Footsteps. I step away from the staircase and smile sheepishly at Caspian as he descends onto the deck, holding his hands out to be as if to plead when he notices me. "No – Not again."

"Oh, come on! I'm not going to be kidnapped twice." I poke his shoulder and try to school my expression into a believable frown but it's hard when his resolve is already chipping at the seams.

"You're too new to this."

"I'll find a way there somehow." Three longboats have been readied for travel and I use the moment now to look to them before meeting his eyes again, watching him crumble.

"Fine," He sighs. "But you stick beside me. Got it?"

"Fine_, mother_. I –"

He holds my arm and leans close. "I promised you I would get you home. I intend to keep you in one piece for it."

_Oh. _

My stomach twists painfully as I look between his eyes. It's a look I've only ever witnessed second-hand, watching on as kids on the playground define themselves as the barrier between their friend and a bully, fathers staring resolutely at their sons standing stiff, preparing for war. The set eyes and resilient jaw of those who protect another not because they couldn't protect themselves, but simply because they had an ability to protect those they cared for. Small declarations of amity I craved, replicating them for those who looked at me and saw someone rash. Brutish. Impulsive. Someone who would cease to exist for them within a blink.

But now here it is. First-hand.

And the feeling is mutual.

"I know, thank you. But I can handle this." My voice is a whisper, in danger of cracking if it were more substantial.

Caspian straightens, his hand loose as it trails down to my wrist before he turns back to the forecastle.

"Drinian, it's time."


	9. Chapter 9

They sail through untroubled waters into a crescent bay, hands of nature curving in to embrace them as the longboats are detached and brought to the shore, the waves whispering to the crew as the water laps at their ankles before bowing down in a brief display of submission.

The golden sand is a singular brush stroke against the breadth of the island, patch-worked onto planes of grass so green it's comical. Surrounding them, the bay is a hazardous collection of hills stacked together, so bumpy and unruly it gives the impression of a hidden reality, that the grass could simply be whisked off to reveal an even more fantastical land where the slopes are that of dragons and the domed roofs of fortresses sunk deep into the ground. Amber twirls in awe, drinking in the sights of lush valleys and the scattering of purple flowers lining the edge of the grass like stitches, waist high with bell shaped petals that chime in the wind.

Sat snug against the horizon is the sun, melting its form in the water and transforming each crew member into an elongated shadow that steal the detail from the sand with their tenacity. Amber wanders, transfixed, to the seam of grass where two lush bushes separate in invitation. The darkness makes the area hard to distinguish, gloom spreading like tar until only the barest strips of grass are laid bare, the tips of carved hedges silhouetted against the rosewood sky. She raises a hand to the shrub to trace the curiously velvet leaves, stepping forward into the shade.

Before she can go far, a voice calls her name and rests a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Amber." She startles, eyes blinking rapidly to fan away the cloud in her mind before turning to face Caspian. He smiles softly at her dazed expression, nodding at her to follow.

They return to a shore dotted with bleary mumbling and torches that pattern the space like stars, settling down in makeshift beds beside one another. Amber amuses herself with the obvious sign of distrust. She might wake up to find a guard or, more easily done, her hands and feet tied up to stop any unsupervised strolls from occurring. What she doesn't acknowledge is their conversation from the deck, the evidence that knows this is more, knows this is an act of protection instead.

After waiting for that kind of declaration which spoke more between the syllables than it did within them, she expected to feel elated when – if – it came her way. But there's none of that. Just a rolling, festering, _aching_ guilt. The kind that found rhythm in every sound, matching its chorus of _'you don't deserve this'_ to every wave, every shanty, every hushed footstep. Pretending there was no issue at all was easier, she would know; she's been doing it for a decade.

* * *

Their only barrier between them and the sand are sheets thinner than the blades they keep slung across hips and shoulder blades, unfit to disguise the many bumps and lumps they rest on. Amber huffs and lifts her blanket to dig out a particularly frustrating pebble that poked her shoulder, throwing it past the circle of sleeping sailors. Caspian chuckles quietly. "At least the hammock will seem like paradise after this." He whispers.

"Believe me, I've still had worse." She replies, echoes of raid sirens haunting her mind. The feel of cold metal against her back and vibrations from the ground that pierced her veins, a heaviness in her head that refused to relent, exhausting her every muscle but retaining a readiness than stopped her from sleeping and opened the way for six hours of dread instead. _Yes,_ she thinks, _definitely worse than a beach._

Soon enough the crew descend into deep sleep, equipped for resting in unusual circumstances thanks to the constant sway and noise of the ship. Amber shifts into a tight ball, pressing her face into her makeshift pillow (one of Caspian's bundled up shirts, which was the best he could offer when assembling their beds) and reaching out a hand to lay in the space between them.

_This isn't right_, Caspian's conscious whispers to him. He waves it away, watching the twitch of her eyebrows as she faces whatever dream, or nightmare, currently fiddling with her mind. She sniffles and turns to bury her head further into the shirt, rebel hairs falling over her face in the process. His hand is hovering in the air before he can comprehend it, itching to complete the journey and brush them away. _Not right. Not right. Not right_. His hand drops to the sand.

Unable to sleep just yet, his brain alive with thoughts about the new island, the Lords, his father and the slumbering presence next to him, Caspian regards Amber's near silhouette in the dark and eventually lands on her outstretched hand, mere centimetres away from his own. Slowly, flicking his eyes between her own and the hand that's inching forward, he brushes her index finger with his own, watching how she unconsciously nudges her hand further towards his. Gently, he slips his palm underneath hers to let their fingers slot together like a puzzle, relishing in how warm and real she feels amidst a place so fictitious – even for him.

It's only then does sleep claim him.

When all are breathing deeply, lost within the new realms of their minds, They emerge from the depths of the island. The torches are snuffed out, the final dregs of smoke twirling lazily up into the rising dawn as a singular footprint travels through the mass of bodies, punctuated with a rhythmic thumping. A second hidden figure follows.

"This one. It's female." Declares one, their voice similar to that of a rattlesnake's warning, footprint buried in the sand beside Lucy.

"So's this one." Adds the second, its presence hovering above Gael marked by an exhale of cold breath.

_Thump. _

_Thump._

"And another." It continues.

"That one is protected." Hisses the first, noting the entwined hands laid bare against the sand. Lucy's book, gifted to her on Narrowhaven by a grateful family, flutters in mid-air. "This one reads."

"Let's take her."

Lucy's body contorts, whisked from her bedding and given no choice but to writhe helplessly against an unknown force, mouth open but incapable of calling for help. Her legs jerk madly as she flails above the incognizant crew, each shudder matched with a quickened thumping, near indistinguishable against her madly racing heartbeat.

She disappears behind the shrubs, the first rays of sunlight reaching out to call her back.

**A/N: I won't be able to post for a while, but I wanted to get this part out before I disappear for a bit, which is why it's about ¼ the length of a usual chapter. Sorry about that. If you're enjoying the story so far, read fics regularly and have the time to do so, please check out this post: ** post/169682254637/hi-im-bitter-about-people-not-commenting-on-fics


	10. Chapter 10

As morning creeps over the island, inching its fingers across the sand and the sea to paint it golden, Caspian wakes to the call of a bird. He yawns and blinks slowly to relieve the cloud of lingering drowsiness from his head and follows the path of his arm down to where his hand still holds Amber's. A steady warmth, unrelated to the sun now embracing the island fully, settles contentedly in his stomach while he takes a moment to look over her undeniably messy hair and mouth parted ever so slightly. He slides his hand out from hers reluctantly and stands, looking towards the Dawn Treader silhouetted against the light in the bay then across his docile crew. Limbs thrown wide, tangled blankets and –

Footsteps.

"Edmund!" He nudges the King beside him, dropping naturally into a fighting stance before retrieving his sword and studying the prints. Four times as large as a human's, spread out enough to present the question of giants though Caspian had never known giants to walk with such hazardous, mislaid steps. There were no two clear paths heading on and off the beach, instead pressing into the sand at various angles and overlapping more than they should. Whatever crept among them in the night, he determined, was no lone being.

Around him the crew raise their heads and spark to life at the sight of their Kings prowling with drawn blades, rushing to do the same. Amber comes to slower, her body registering the unsettled atmosphere before her brain can, tensing and trying to fight the urge to open her eyes as the quiet shifting of the crew whispers with fear. She eventually opens her eyes to an empty bed beside her, just like the others behind and around it.

"Where's Lucy? Lucy! LUCY!" At the sound of Edmund's yelling she jolts up and snatches up her sword, following the crew to where they approach the stretch of hedges and noting the footprints with an apprehensive eye.

The fade into grass from sand is littered with more footprints, overlapping and creating a deformed hulk that the crew expand with their own frantic steps heading further into the island. They emerge onto a wide slope of grass, inset with swells of land decorated with thicker swirls of greenery, each with a towering shrub protruding from their centre – equally trimmed with a delicate hand. Land stretches far in front of them, a collection of dips and hills that end with an impressive wall of mountains, though there was no time to admire; the gaping landscape was currently fuelling their panic. It was so _quiet_. Not a sign of life in sight, just undisturbed nature with few places for a creature – especially a giant, like they suspected – to hide. Whatever took Lucy was stealthy, capable of covering the breadth of their tracks and apparently very skilled at maintaining a garden.

The crew delve further, only the faint whistle of wind and soft tread of their steps audible against their individually racing heartbeats. "Caspian – Lucy's dagger." Edmund cuts at the silence, kneeling to pick up the fallen blade. Caspian moves closer, followed by several crew members, when a spear arcs high over a hedge and embeds itself between the Kings. A swarm of others follow, finding the ground between scuttling feet until they're surrounded by a wide circle of pikes and left to lumber like caged animals in a pen.

"Stop right there or perish." Orders a disembodied voice, a deep croak like that of a bullfrog. Amber grips her sword tighter as she searches for the source, swallowing her fear at the thought of being surrounded.

_There_. The bristle of leaves on a nearby pillar, the slightest ripple despite the mild air. Unconsciously, she steps forward. Around her the men are tense, waiting for an order or a threat to infect the air once again, shuffling in fretful anticipation. From the corner of his eye, Caspian notes Amber's slow gait and begins to side-step to block her path.

The air fills with screams.

Amber is thrown backwards, her back slamming into one of the swells of grass as the crew members around her are disarmed one by one. Nearby, Caspian fights the hold on his sword only to have it slam into his nose while a second force crumples his legs from beneath him. Edmund jolts back and forth tackling multiple beasts before colliding roughly with Drinian and sending them both to the ground. In mere minutes the group are defenceless and nursing various injuries, limps and cuts and smacks and whacks, internally accepting that leaving Tavros on the Dawn Treader was a _big_ mistake. Their own weapons float in the air, gleaming tips balanced between their eyes.

"What sort of creatures are you?" Caspian demands, scrabbling to his feet.

"Big ones – terrifying!"

"Like tigers!"

"You don't want to mess with us."

"Or what?" Edmund steps up beside Caspian.

"Or I'll claw you to death!" A voice growls, their location marked with a sword waggling more than the rest.

"I'll bite you with my fangs!" Another adds just as the air shifts.

A tenseness that lay across the island like a blanket comes away, a subtle feeling that leaves the crew feeling oddly lighter as if the air had become cleaner. Outlines vague and clear like glass form in the air, becoming more substantial by the second. Colour blooms to show their attackers in stunning clarity.

"You mean squash us with your fat bellies?" Edmund provides.

"Tickle us with your toes?" Caspian adds. They mumble in confusion, eyebrows furrowing but when they turn and see their brethren, the nearest creature to Caspian startles and rolls ungracefully onto the grass.

Nearby, Amber finds the urge to laugh trapped behind a frozen wall of shock, sharp and sudden like a slap across the face. Surrounding her are beings like she could have never imagined – barely reaching the height of her hip are heavily wrinkled old men, faces circled by thick tufts of hair and long beards ranging from ginger, auburn, white, black and grey; though where they should have two feet, there was only one as long as their bodies were tall. The creatures hopped around the space in glee, completely forgetting that they had been threatening people moments ago and acting more like children than their appearance would suggest they should.

In the near distance where the carved hedges make way for flat land, a sprawling mansion appears made of smoothed grey stone and attached to several taller towers topped with merlons, everything lined with thick vines that curl around the many windows and drape over the ledges. From a set of golden doors comes Lucy walking side by side with a decorous man with silver hair and layers of brown robes, all detailed with minuscule images and words in forgotten languages.

At the sight of the man, the small creatures scamper away and fill the air with unruly thumping and cries of "the oppressor!"

"Your majesties." He bows deeply.

"Caspian and Edmund." Lucy introduces. "This is Coriakin, it's his island."

"That's what he thinks!" One of the creatures, seemingly the one in charge, bleats. "You have wronged us, magician."

Coriakin sighs. "I have not wronged you, I made you invisible for your own protection. Now, be gone!" From his pocket he scatters a white powder, sending them into fear fuelled frenzy, tripping over their feet in the rush to get away.

"What was that? And what are they?" Lucy asks.

"Lint, but don't tell them. They used to be dwarves, but their laziness got them cursed. Now I call them dufflepuds." He looks between the Kings. "Please, you must come inside. There is much to be discussed." Caspian nods to Drinian before stepping inside, followed by Edmund, Lucy, Amber, Eustace and Drinian, the latter of which joining after ordering the crew to clear the beach, inform the rest of the men of new developments, and ensure that the dufflepuds are kept a respectable distance away.

They enter an echoing foyer; dominated by a mahogany staircase that stands guarded by pillars carved into the shape of sitting dragons, the detail in their leathery wings and claws - not to mention the jewels set into their eyes - rendering Amber hypnotised. _Could I stay here?_ She thinks absentmindedly. The many arching doorways branching off from the foyer seem to ooze temptation, doors left open just enough to spark intrigue at the flashes of purple light and scales, but the true nature of their contents still hidden away.

Together they ascend to the second floor, admiring how the silver lined skylight fractures the space into golden squares, warming the room until every last trace of fear they felt not even ten minutes ago is melted away. Walking down one of the smaller corridors sees the replacement of the natural light with phoenix shaped wall sconces burning gold, their pools of light providing just enough visibility to see the details of the carpet that muffles their steps, threaded with symbols of moons and stars and nonsensical runes.

Amber sidles ahead to where Caspian walks alone and removes the ribbon of cloth that secured her hair away from her face. "Here." She nudges his arm. "You've got blood in your beard." He takes it gratefully, cleaning the mess from where the hilt of his sword was slammed against his nose. Thankfully, there were no broken bones to be mended.

"I was hoping it would make me seem more intimidating." He jokes quietly, leaning in towards her.

Amber scoffs and covers it with a cough as Drinian shoots her a fleeting glare. "Sorry to say, but it hasn't worked. You're as intimidating as a teddy bear."

Coriakin opens a door indistinguishable from the rest, harbouring the same frame decorated to depict a forest filled with all the mythical beasts you could imagine (Amber's personal favourite being a fairy standing on the head of a badger) and, just like the rest, finished with a lion shaped handle.

The room they enter is horseshoe shaped, with floor to ceiling bookcases running parallel to each other, crammed full of leather-bound tomes that fill the air with the comforting aroma of aged parchment. The curved end of the room was highlighted by two wooden pillars that bowed into an archway which spanned the length of the ceiling to intersect with other pillars set within the room. The small dome was separated from the library by an enchantment, the sunlight filtering from its skylight cut off when it brushed against the pillars, so no natural light penetrated the larger space. Instead, the room was lit by stars. Thousands of them whirling across the bookcases in patches of azure light.

In the centre of the dome lay a table void of contents except a singular scroll. Coriakin strode towards it as the group, each enraptured with a different section of the room, stood distracted by the doorway. Though he'd keep it to himself, Coriakin found their reactions vaguely amusing. Nobody had been to appreciate his home in a decade, it was nice to witness the glassy eyes and open mouths, even if the tour had to be cut short.

He clears his throat and lets the scroll unravel across the length of the floor. What first appears as a simple tapestry, lovingly painted with the same fantastical imagery woven through the entire building, soon blooms into a dimensional map. The ocean, deep and glistening as if they were looking at the real thing, spreads from the centre and covers its surface, picture perfect white clouds settling above out of thin air.

"Here is the source of your troubles." He waves his hand and the scene shifts, spanning the sea like a bird in flight, until a new space appears. "Dark Island. That's where evil lurks." A blackened hand raised from the ground, clawed fingers curled over into a loose fist. Green mist, the same from Narrowhaven, twisting and curling around the shape as a snake would. It seemed anxious. Expectant. Waiting for the next creature to wander into its grasp so it can smother its life, craving their energy as someone isolated for life would crave companionship. It was malicious. And it was alive.

"It can take any form, it can make your darkest dreams come true. It seeks to corrupt all goodness, to steal the light from this world." Coriakin continues.

"How do we stop it?" Lucy asks, the words cast in steel. She stared at the island with grim determination, as did the others – all except Amber and Eustace.

The latter was pointedly ignoring it, choosing to believe that if he couldn't see it then whatever _it_ was, infecting his mind and tapping light fingers on his heart between beats, would no longer affect him. Amber, on the other hand, was desperately trying to channel the determination of the others by observing them. Drinian appeared unphased as ever, crossed arms and hanging back in one of the pillars shadows, but his spine was rigid and his teeth were clenched. Evil was breathing down his neck and through his skin directly into his core just like the rest. Edmund and Caspian both held onto their weapons, reclaimed before entering the mansion, with chins tipped upwards in defiance and eyes alight with conviction.

"You must break its spell." He turns to Edmund. "That sword you carry. There are six others."

"Have you seen them? Did they pass through here?"

"Yes."

"Where were they headed?" Adds Caspian.

"Where I sent them." Coriakin strides across the map and through the projection of Dark Island with ease, collectively unnerving the others. Did he not feel evil's cold hands playing his spine like a piano? Its presence making a home in his veins?

The map shifts again, bringing into view an island twice the size as Dark Island and far more inviting. Dominated by a crudely shaped mountain and sparse patches of nature, it wasn't what most would call an ideal destination but for the seven people staring at it now, there could be nothing better.

"You must follow the blue star to Ramandu's island," An orb, glowing far brighter than any star they had ever seen, hovers above the peak of the island. "there the seven swords must be laid at Aslan's table. Only then can their true magical power be released. But beware, you are all about to be tested. Until you lay down the seventh sword, evil has the upper hand. It will do everything in its power to tempt you." Coriakin turns to each of them in turn. "Be strong. To defeat the darkness out there, you must defeat the darkness inside yourself."

With a wave of his hand he returns the scroll to its table and takes a moment to think. He sighs. "This must have been a stressful morning for you all, I apologise. Please, invite your crew in. I'll lay out breakfast." Unable to speak just yet, Caspian nods and follows him out the door and down into the foyer. The rest follow numbly, trying to shake the unease off as it clung to them like spiderwebs. They silently agreed not to inform the crew just yet, they should have a decent breakfast first.

Drinian strides outside to gather the crew while the rest of the group follow Coriakin into a large dining hall. It was located in the south wing of the mansion, where the building dipped low behind the three floored majesty of its front and allowed an impressively large skylight to dominate the ceiling along with windows against the right wall that offered a panoramic view of the rest of the island.

A table, fit to seat 50, fills the stretch of floor in the centre of the room. Coriakin waves his hands and the high-backed chairs stacked high against the walls float gracefully into position to line each table edge while a red tablecloth unfurls itself across the surface. At the opposite end of the hall sits a large glass cabinet which rattles and lets loose a hoard of tinkling cutlery and silverware which settles on the table dutifully. The group wander around the hall, transfixed.

Amber made her way to the grand fireplace on the wall opposite the windows, both tall and wide enough that those present in the hall could all stand inside it quite comfortably, and watched the lion sculpted in the stone above its opening. Once she knew who he was and began noticing more and more lion imagery on the Dawn Treader, she found herself to be far more comfortable at sea. Like there was a watcher, someone to protect them from harm and to provide ease even in dire moments.

There was none of that now.

She stared into his grey eyes and they stared back, but still evil caressed the inside of her skull with tapered fingers, waiting for the right time to strike like nails scraping chalkboard. _Help us_, she pleaded. But she was alone.

There's a bang and a sudden influx of voices, the Dawn Treader crew approaching the hall. She could hear them remarking about the grand house and how their luck had miraculously transformed – their unawareness swiftly becoming Amber's most craved desire. As she approaches the table, Caspian drifts into view to pull out a chair and offer it to her. They smile, saying nothing, and sit.

Oversized plates and bowls in the centre of the table fill with food with a _pop,_ the crew cheering at the sight of glistening roast chickens, toppling towers of gooseberries and pitchers of sweet honeyed mead. Sausages and stews and salmon and scallops and scampi and sweetcorn and shrimp and steak and squash and strudel and strawberries– the crew were beside themselves at the sight. Amber bypassed the oozing baked camembert in front of her and snatched a pitcher of wine, filling her goblet to the brim and drinking deeply. From behind her, the fireplace seemed to crackle with disappointment.

She drank more.

There they stayed for hours, the crew indulging themselves until each and every member was bloated and dazed. Marco nibbled the tip of a chocolate covered strawberry, unwilling to abandon the best meal of his life, while Rhince helped Gael with a face of peas on her plate beside Tavros, who had the carcass of an entire boiled chicken before him. Those who had spoken to Coriakin earlier were quieter, still engaging with the others but with less enthusiasm, though the meal certainly helped to dull the dread for a little while.

However, they knew not to ignore it completely. It wasn't something you could avert your eyes to and walk on by, defeating the evil required action. Confrontation. And above all, bravery. Even Eustace was contemplating how to help, though he would never make a show of it like he believed the others to do.

Amber did not share this sentiment.

For hours she drank and drank and drank, and ate, but mostly drank as much as necessary to quiet her thoughts. She hadn't met a problem she couldn't ignore or repress or run from in 20 years and she wasn't going to let one sneak up on her now.

_To defeat the darkness out there, you must defeat the darkness inside yourself._

Drink.

_You can't ignore this forever._

Drink.

_You're trapped._

Drink.

_You're disappointing everyone._

Drink. Drink. Drink.

Dinner and dessert did a valiant job of soaking up the wine in her system but ultimately, once the plates were clear and talk of returning to sea had surfaced, she was well and truly drunk. Her brain was mercifully quiet, the hush of evil drowned in a cherry tasting sea, though the vague sense of being watched lingered as it had done the moment she had her first sip.

Coriakin ushered Caspian, Drinian, Lucy and Edmund to a table near the door where he lay out a piece of blank parchment. Amber stood to follow, clutching the edge of her table when her head swam as if the wine had filled her skull and stained her brain red, eyes flicking to the fireplace. The flames danced across Aslan's stone eyes, alight and burning with disappointment, as he seemingly stared at Amber. She turned away quickly and stumbled to the others.

When she reached them, Drinian was recounting their travels and watching as the islands drew themselves on the parchment in perfect detail. She swayed on the spot and blinked sluggishly, too slow to process such a fascinating display of magic and instead just enjoying following the swooping lines with her eyes like she would watch the path of a butterfly in the air. They finished and rolled up the newly crafted map, wishing goodbye to Coriakin, to which he wished them good luck in return, and reluctantly left the mansion.

Walking through the garden proves a difficult task. Though the sun is high and bright in the sky, everything lit with perfect clarity, Amber finds herself unable to avoid the various dips and bumps in the ground. She drifts to the back of the group, deliberating every step.

Caspian removes himself from the crew and places her arm across his shoulder before putting his own around her waist. "How much did you drink?" Her head flops onto his shoulder.

"Not enough." She replies, though it sounds more like 'nur enuf'. He sighs and helps her into a longboat, watching her as she drops her head over the side and dips her hand in the water, her eyes distant and cloudy. The rest of the short journey was spent in the same position, Amber quietly resenting the water while the crew chalked it up to too much excitement in too little time.

Once back on the Dawn Treader Caspian, again supporting a heavily unsteady Amber, begins to make his way across deck.

"Your Majesty." Drinian strides over. "With all due respect, you can't give her special treatment. She should deal with her mistake just like anyone else, with a hammock and a bucket."

"Understood, Captain." He responds simply. It's rare that Drinian is wrong about anything, and this isn't one of those times. This choice was hers to make and hers to learn from. He knew that.

When they finally make their way below deck, Amber breaks the silence. "Caspian." She pauses. _What was it I wanted to talk about again? Something green? _Unease sneaks through her stomach. She purses her lips. "Was Coriakin a wizard?" She eventually asks, making him laugh and forget their grim journey ahead for a moment.

"If you wish to call him that, I don't think he would object."

"Cool." She whispers, nodding her head heavily as if he'd just presented some astounding theory regarding the universe.

"Come, you need to sleep." They enter the crew's sleeping quarters, currently empty except for Fiedan, though the hammocks are still strung up due to their rush to reach Coriakin's island the previous night.

"Is this one mine?" She points to the top hammock in a column of three, staring at it as if she had never seen anything so fascinating before. Caspian smiles lightly.

"If you want it to be."

Fiedan walks over and nudges Caspian. "Like your women on top, eh Sir?"

"Ha, ha." Caspian laughs drily. "For that you're on maintenance tonight."

"Should've seen that comin'..." He scratches his head and leaves, Amber watching on with a tilted head.

"What was that about?"

Caspian points the hammock below hers. "This one's mine."

"Sorry if I kick you in the face." She mumbles, patting his arm absentmindedly.

"You're far too short to do that." He jokes.

"For that I might just do it on purpose." Caspian shrugs and lies on his own hammock, deciding to have a little bit of fun. It was so easy to forget with her. Forget everything. Being what everybody thought he was. The list was endless and yet it dissolved every time he found himself alone with her, the world felt untouchable in the best way possible.

He watches her face as she glares at the hammock currently hanging level with her eyes. "So how do I…" She gestures noncommittally to the hammock.

"Hmm?"

"Help me, would you?"

"With what?" He says with fake innocence.

"Caspian…"

"A minute ago you were saying you would kick me in the face."

Amber buries her face in her hands and sighs before fixating her still dazed eyes on his, holding his arm where it was folded loosely across his chest. "King Caspian the Tenth, the most humble and gracious ruler of Narnia and saviour of my soul, would you _please_ do the honour of helping me into my hammock?" She says with an abundance of slurring.

"Well when you put it like that…" He stands and laces his hands together for a step. Amber grabs onto a nearby post and steps up, doing a half roll half jump into the hammock. The bed curves down and rolls her sideways, but Caspian reacts instantaneously. He grabs the edge of the hammock and pulls upward, pushing Amber with the other into the centre of the hammock until she's cradled in its protective dip. "Are you alright?" He asks after a moments silence.

"Yep! Thanks." She squeaks, still feeling his hand steady on her hip through the fabric. He slowly steps back to where he can see her face – now tinged pink.

"Sleep well, Amber."

With that he leaves, fighting instinct and gathering his courage to face his men.

There was much to discuss.

**A/N: A couple things to note. Firstly, thank you for 1,000 reads! I never expected so many, especially since this story has only been up for two months, but I'm very grateful. Secondly, if you have a moment please comment whether you prefer first person or third person for this story. Currently I'm thinking of having all but one of the future chapters be back to first person but if more readers prefer third, then I'll stick to that format.**

Also I promise there's more Amber and Caspian content coming bear with me ok chapter 13 is going to be cute


	11. Chapter 11

**This chapter was getting too long, so I split it in two. Here's part one, and part two will be up tomorrow! Hope everyone has a good Easter!**

I wake with a groan and roll onto my back, regretting the decision immediately. My head feels wrong, as if when I move it my brain remains stationary - only to rush to follow the movement on a five second delay, colliding harshly with the inside of my skull when it hurries to nestle itself back in the space.

"Good morning, Snoozy Sparrow." I hear Caspian greet me distantly, his voice muffled underneath the excessive pain.

"Snoozy Sparrow?" I ask, rubbing the heel of my hand across my eyes. When I open them, my vision is dotted with spots of swirling light.

"The fairytale, do you not know it?"

"I'm afraid not. I know Sleeping Beauty though, feel free to use that one instead." Swinging my legs over the side of the hammock, I blink slowly at the ground and will it to steady in my sight.

"Maybe another time." Caspian responds distractedly. "Do you need help?"

"I've got it." I reluctantly jump and land with bent knees, only to be thrown off balance by the vicious tide a second later. Caspian is by my side immediately, helping me stand and rest against a nearby wooden beam. My head pounds harder, brain replaced with a loose bowling ball; It feels like my head is going to crack open like an egg any minute now. I look up, white patterns still blotting my sight, and see Caspian begin to talk. "I'm fine." I cut him off quickly. I need to focus.

_In. Out. In. Out. In. Out._

The deep breaths shrink the bowling ball in my head, just a bit, and I try to concentrate on the comfort from breathing in the salty air instead of the spike of pain that strikes with every inhale.

Finally, when I adjust enough to the pain to push it back enough to think, I look to Caspian. "I'll teach you how to stow your hammock." He says almost regretfully, the pity clear in his eyes. The lack of a mirror in here is probably for the best, I can't begin to imagine the state I must be in.

Together we untie the hammock from its posts and roll it into a tight bundle, covering it in a net and cloth before enclosing it in one of the trunks at the end of the berthing deck.

The lid closes with a harsh snap, sending unwelcome vibrations through my head that make me groan and slide down against the wall so I can bury my head between my knees. Somewhere in the distance Caspian mentions lunch but even the promise of food isn't enough for me to stand or simply raise my head. It feels like the task would require a team of five, and I briefly consider that this newfound heaviness could transform my body into the most effective anchor ever if tied to a rope and thrown over the side.

Someone nudges my shoulder.

Instead of raising my head I rest my cheek on my knees and look to the side where Caspian is now sat beside me holding out a cup of water and lunch – a hardtack biscuit and cheese. I murmur my thanks and gather the strength to shift my head against the wall, accepting the food gratefully.

Few sailors occupy the room with us, taking hurried naps or changing clothes. Watching them move so assuredly strengthens my headache, but the food and drink help ease the fog with time. After a while of silent chewing, I turn to Caspian.

"Why is the wind so loud today?" His whole body seems to slump with a new weight.

"We've entered a storm." He answers, eyebrows drawn together.

"But the blue star –"

"Is nowhere to be seen." I see a muscle clench in his jaw and I instinctively reach out a hand to give his arm a reassuring squeeze. There are no words to be said. Our only beacon of help is unobtainable for the foreseeable future and the presence of a storm weeps with visions of immense danger and death. All I can do is let him know he's not alone and, if I can convince myself of the same, reassure him that we're all going to be okay. I push away the mental images of the deck splintered in two, men fruitlessly attempting to stay afloat a churning black ocean and the purple mast being snatched away by the wind_. I could really use a glass of wine right now_, I think bitterly.

Caspian puts his hand atop my own and smiles in thanks, but his expression soon turns curious. "You commented on the wind instead of the rocking. Why?" I take a moment to connect the dots.

"I thought it was just me and my inability to stand straight. It didn't click." My stomach sinks at the realisation that the next few days, if I'm being optimistic, are going to be spent bumping into walls and exerting the little energy I have into keeping the contents of my stomach inside rather than across the floor like the bucking sea would prefer.

"You should give yourself more credit. Your balance isn't as bad as it was."

"Well, with all the wine still in my system, I expected things to be swaying when I started walking."

He leans in and talks lower though the nearest sailor is still across the other side of the room from us. "I'd give you more to help you sober up if I could, but I'm under strict instruction to treat you as I would anyone else."

"Since when does a King take instructions?" I ask, trying to fight back the part of my brain that wants to whine and whine and whine until he caves and blesses me with extra water. There's no reason I shouldn't be treated like everyone else. In fact, it would be beneficial. I'd feel more integrated with the crew than ever, and maybe Drinian would hate me less.

"Since they came from Drinian and he can be deeply intimidating when he wishes to be."

"Are you trying to say he's not wishing to be _all the time_?" I find that hard to believe. He laughs and shakes his head.

"Not with me, usually."

"So, if I'm to be treated like everyone else, does that mean no more training?" I say after a brief pause. I never thought I would find anything that could make waking up at 4am worth the struggle, but every morning spent with Caspian proves me wrong. Though it would be hard to continue calling them training sessions considering we often get distracted by his stories or my questions. Nevertheless, I wouldn't want to give those up.

"No, the training can stay. We can start again tomorrow if you like." He smiles and I nod, trying to suppress a grin. We can't fight if I can't even stand up straight, so that means two hours of stories with all my worries left locked on the other side of the door.

I can't wait.

* * *

"Focus!" His sword comes crashing down on my own which was tipped towards the ground. I turn away from where I was staring through the windows and parry, swooping my blade in a large upward arc as I try to lock the tip underneath his guard and pull, but he's not allowing it. He throws his blade away from mine and attacks with a jab, forcing me backwards.

He starts to attack again, my arm rigid and ready to block in retaliation, when the wind hits.

A brutal gust, the third this hour that makes me fear for my life, attacks the ship. It pushes and hums against the windows, begging for entrance. Above us I can hear the floorboards creaking as men rush around trying to keep order, their yelling muffled under the thunder and rain assaulting the ocean in a ceaseless attack. My foot slips and I fall, sword thudding against the floor beside me.

"Are you alright?" Caspian holsters his weapon and holds out a hand to help me stand.

"Training's no fun when I can't keep myself standing for longer than five minutes." I release his hand and slump down onto the bench beside the windows, watching the white spray from the waves splash over the glass as the ship continues to rock violently.

"It will get easier. Besides, you'll be thanking me if we ever enter battle during a storm." I roll my eyes, turning to watch him as he settles across from me. Even though the space is dim, and his face is brushed with shadows, his eyes shine. I don't understand how. They're impossibly dark and yet they never cease to remind me of gemstones, like rich smoky quartz under a spotlight. It's mesmerising.

I look to the dreary landscape for a distraction. Every few seconds the room is submerged in darkness as a wave climbs the Dawn Treader and plunges us into its midnight depths, though there's not much difference between below the sea it and above, where the sky is filled with low black clouds that choke the light – except for the lightning the crew are valiantly trying to steer us away from, of course.

"Wasn't there another island close to Ramandu's on the map that Coriakin showed us?" I ask, recalling the shape that zoomed past as the map travelled from Dark Island to Ramandu's. He nods.

"Yes, but we don't want to reach it in a storm. The force could beach the boat and render it useless, or we could hit rock underneath the current that would tear the boat in two." I can't help but choke out a laugh. I've traded a war for a storm at sea, and to think I believed that life would be safer here last week…

"So, it would mean certain death over highly likely, like we're in now." I respond drily.

"We're not going to die. I promise you that." He catches my eye and I hate how easy he makes it to believe him.

"You make a lot of promises you have no control over keeping, Caspian."

He smiles and huffs out a laugh. "Yet keep them I will."

I don't doubt that he will do everything in his power to try.

The ship jolts right and creaks ominously. From beyond the door we see the blurred outlines of men rushing by and a cacophony of yelling, soon followed by the familiar _thump thump thump _of people climbing the stairs.

"I need to help." Caspian stands abruptly and retrieves his coat from the back of a chair, his demeanour transformed in an instant. That's another thing I find remarkable around him – how quickly he can shift from somebody so quotidian to a leader. A King.

I stand too, but he looks to me with a mix of care and commiseration. "You can't come with me." He gives the door a fleeting glance before striding over to me and holding onto my arms. "Promise me you'll stay below deck."

"Caspian –"

"Promise me." He cuts me off.

"I promise." He looks between my eyes and nods, like he's trying to determine whether or not I'm telling the truth. While typically I would love to sneak up there on my own, seeing the fear in his eyes and the plead in his voice makes me stop. This isn't just an act or a dream or any other excuse I want to fashion for myself – this is real. Here is someone who cares for me, truly, and I can't to throw that away. He stands straight and drops his arms to his sides, though I can still feel the gentle press of his fingers across my shoulders.

"Men often get thrown overboard in a storm. I'd quite like to avoid that happening here." I nod and accept the complete lack of benefits to me going on deck. I want to help, but that doesn't mean I can. There's no denying my unfamiliarity with this. "Thank you." He raises his hand and I freeze, watching as he tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear almost unconsciously. He pauses, hand hovering beside my head, before clearing his throat and mumbling a goodbye, leaving the room with a swish of his coat.

* * *

Following his bizarre and unprecedented display of affection, Caspian assists the men on deck for the entire day.

Crew members come and go, shrugging on coats as they ascend the stairs and returning so drenched that I wouldn't be surprised if the water had seeped into their bones as well. From how badly they shiver, I doubt the difference would even be noticeable. The second the door to the deck is closed, they direct frozen fingers to their coat buttons, fumbling to remove the sodden fabric and eager to have their shirts follow suit. At best they salvage a two-hour rest, but for most it's not long until deck duty is replaced by rowing until the next rotation.

When he left, I wandered the ship searching for something to occupy my time and found the door to Caspian's cabin, occupied by Lucy and Gael, wide open. The two girls sat on the bed playing _'I went to market'_ with Gael facing away from the door and Lucy glancing through every now and again, eventually catching me passing by.

Now I sat where Lucy did, with her moving to rest against the wall so we formed a triangle, trying to concentrate on the game. It wasn't easy now I had an ideal view of all their comings and goings, which is how I knew Caspian had been above deck for far too long. Rhince had already done two shifts up there and still there was no sign of him.

"I went to market and I brought an apple, eggs, flowers, a can of beans and… cake." Gael said.

"I went to market and I brought an apple, eggs, flowers, a can of beans, cake, and," Lucy paused dramatically. "A goat!" She finished excitedly. Gael giggled and insisted it wasn't possible. "We never said what type of market it was!" Gael giggled more and continued the game, this time adding an entire castle to the list. They'd given up including me during the last round, when I failed spectacularly at remembering only three items because I thought I'd heard Caspian yelling above deck.

"A goat, a castle, and three dragons!" The door opens again and I strain my head to the side to see who's there, but it's one of the crew I haven't interacted with beyond the expected niceties.

This was getting too much. All I can hear is him telling me about men being thrown overboard and the fact that the weather only seems to be getting worse unsettles my stomach more. "_I'd quite like to avoid that happening here." So would I, you idiot. If you're not alive up there I'm going to kill you._

There's another flash of lightning and thunder rumbles all too soon. It's close. Dangerously close. Lucy falters for a moment and inhales, but then picks up the game as if nothing happened. I wish I shared her resolve.

"Excuse me." I murmur and leave, eyes pinned on the door at the top of the stairs. I just need to make sure he's still there.

"Amber – no." A hand forcefully grabs my forearm and drags me away towards the end of the corridor. I blink away the cloud of panic in my head, though it still feels like it's choking me, and turn to Marco. His mouth is set into a firm line and already there are dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep as he stares at me stiffly. "You know you can't go out there."

"Caspian's been up there since this morning, I just want to know if he's –" _Alive._ "– Okay."

"I'll check, you just stay here." The door opens when he's halfway up the steps, but the rumbling of even more thunder blocks the sound of him speaking to whoever just emerged. A few seconds later he comes back with Fiedan, already shirtless and heading into the berthing deck. "He's fine. They're getting him to come back down soon, there's just a lot to be done." The knot in my stomach eases slightly, one hand giving the loose end of it a quick tug, but I doubt it will unravel much more until I can see him and clarify it for myself. Not that I think they're lying, but my mind has a special power for creating very vivid and very grim figments. Still I nod and give him my thanks.

We're quiet for a while. Looking out of the porthole only makes me feel sicker. I used the think the waves were beautiful, the sea here is so clear. It made everything dazzle, and when the sun was setting it embraced the colours of the sky as its own and made me feel as if nothing could go wrong in the world. Now my heart seizes every time a new monstrous wave rises and knocks the ship, leaving hands of white foam on the glass when it can't break through.

"What does a storm mean for us?" I ask, my voice pathetic. The more I watch, the more our situation sinks in. It consumes my mind and the nightmares grow as swiftly as the waves do, only they have nothing to stop them. They just keep growing until they're a towering tsunami ready to crash down and wash me away. Marco sighs deeply and runs a hand across his eyes.

"A few dreadful weeks at best. We can't cook so it's biscuits and cheese for everyone." He sarcastically cheers but I can't bring myself to laugh. Weeks? _Weeks?_

"Can we not go on the deck at all?" I don't want to hear the answer, but the tiniest sliver of hope is praying for a miracle. Thinking of the size of the crew and the size of the ship, with half of our space declared off limits, makes me itch.

"Unless you want to help clearing off the water or face Drinian at the wheel, no." Marco answers.

"How do I clear the water off?"

"Amber, I was joking. You have to stay down here." I bite my tongue. If he won't tell me, there has to be someone who will. There has to be a moment where I can go up. There _has_ to be. How could anyone survive without fresh air for weeks? My lungs seem to beg for the crisp, cold wind now they're aware of its absence. I don't know if I can survive this.

"Are you scared?" He asks.

"I've had worse." _For now_, I add internally. Too many elements of this is familiar. The confinement. The rations. Death's presence lurking around the corner. But that had never lasted for weeks before. Marco doesn't ask what I mean and I don't offer any elaboration, but still memories from last year creep into mind.

The Blitz was like nothing we could have imagined; a terror peeled from the darkest parts of our brains, thoughts we never dared to visit made true. For 57 days we were bombed. Night after night after night – even when they ended, and the sirens no longer blared across the country, come evening I still retreated to my shelter because I couldn't shake the echo. I thought I still heard them wailing. People still lived their lives, we picked ourselves up in the mornings and carried on, but then came late December.

100,000 bombs in one night. We didn't find out until it was published in the newspapers in February, but we all remembered. It was impossible not to. The vibrations had my skull rattling long after they had ceased to fall, my whole body quivering in fear. It took me three days to brave the outside again and nothing had been the same since.

Something on my face must show that I'm somewhere else because Marco extends his arms to offer a hug. I gratefully accept, winding my arms around his back and burying my face in his shoulder. I feel him do the same. We may be the same height and only one year apart in age, but he feels like a baby brother I need to protect. I think it's his face, there's something unarguably boyish about him that I can't see shaking with age, the severity of his expression now doesn't suit him; it looks as if he's trying on his fathers shoes or shirt – oversized and worn down, and just… wrong.

He sighs and pulls back. "I need to get back to work." He taps a coil of rope attached to his hip. "Deck duty." My eyebrows furrow in confusion, so he explains. "We tie ourselves to the mast. It's the best way we can ensure, well, not dying I guess."

"Please be safe." I say, wrapping my arms around myself. He gives me a reassuring smile and nods, turning towards the staircase. It opens before he reaches it and together we stop as Caspian descends the steps shivering so hard it's like he's convulsing, but when I step forward to talk to him Marco holds a hand out in front of me and shakes his head once. Caspian doesn't see us, he simply walks down the opposite end of the corridor and disappears from sight.

"Let him rest." He says softly. I stare at the empty space and mumble an 'okay', torn between the relief of seeing him alive and moving and the desperate need to shout for the doctor to ensure he rests properly with as much warmth as possible.

When he sees that I'm not about to make a mad dash down the hallway, Marco ascends to the deck and leaves me alone. Lucy and Gael's voices drift out from the open cabin door a few feet away and I find myself heading towards them without thinking.

I knock on the door and force a smile when they both turn. "Can I join?"

"Of course!" Lucy exclaims, patting the spot on the bed where I had been before.

"I just won. You can start the next round." Gael says when I'm settled.

"I went to the market and brought" I pause and think.

_'We tie ourselves to the mast. It's the best way we can ensure, well, not dying I guess.'_

"Some rope."

**A quick thank you to Jane Smith and Liz who both left lovely comments but I unfortunately can't PM my gratitude, and to everyone else who has left comments, favourites, and followed this story so far. **


	12. Chapter 12

**If possible, I'd recommend listening to an ocean thunderstorm playlist while reading this chapter. It certainly helped me while writing it. **

Caspian was suffering. In the last few days he had rarely spoken, choosing often to stay within the confines of his office or on the deck until somebody (Drinian, for the most part) physically took him away. Our morning sessions had dissolved, each strike a weak tap and half of his time was spent glancing out of the window and letting the waves wash away his train of thought, so now they've ceased without a word. With each passing day, he looks worse.

Usually his stories are so vivid; I know about Althea his nurse, who first introduced him to Narnian stories, and his tutor Doctor Cornelius, who saved his life. I know of his first interactions with Narnians and High King Peter. He's recounted his travels through the Seven Isles with such detail that the clarity with which I can imagine them often makes me believe that they were my own memories. Now he loses track with each sentence and it appears like nothing can shake him from this cloud of despair that has consumed him.

On the seventh night of the storm, I find out why.

"We're stuck at half rations with food and water for two more weeks maximum. This is your last chance to turn back Your Majesty. There's no guarantee we'll spot the blue star any time soon, not in this storm." Drinian says. I'm crouched in the hallway, leaning as much of my weight on the wall as I can while ensuring that I can make a quick getaway. I'd rather not have them find me eavesdropping like this. "Needle in a haystack, trying to find this Ramandu place. We could sail right past it and off the end of the world." He continues.

"Or get eaten by a sea serpent." I hear somebody, Edmund it sounds like, supply. _Another nightmare to add to the list,_ I think.

Somebody sighs heavily. "I'm just saying the men are getting nervous. These are strange seas we're sailing, the likes of which I've never seen before." A chair scrapes across the floor suddenly.

"Then perhaps, Captain, you would like to be the one to explain to Mr Rhince that we're abandoning the search for his family." It's the most I've heard Caspian say all week, and in a tone so scorched with anger that I fear he'll turn things physical.

Silence. I press closer to the wall. "I'll get back to it." I hear Drinian say, just before his silhouette comes into view in the glass door. My breath hitches and I stand as quick as I dare, crossing the hallway and towards the stairs that lead down to the berthing deck. "Just a word of warning, the sea can play nasty tricks on a crews mind. _Very_ nasty." I hear the door open and slam shut, then a distant set of footsteps leading up.

It's time.

I've grown more restless with each passing day. Everything is surmounting into a terror more terrible than anything the ocean could reveal from its depths, but only I can see it looming over the Dawn Treader waiting for the right moment to drop. Nobody has let me do _anything._ Lucy and Gael have the same issue, though at least they have distractions. Lucy, forbidden from rowing or going on the deck like me, is preoccupied with keeping Gael as happy and calm as possible while Rhince helps to stop us all from dying horrible deaths and Gael is eager to let her, snatching any activity or game Lucy can come up with to sooth her overactive mind. Eustace has also been encouraged away from helping, not that he ever planned to. So far, he's been perfectly content to isolate himself and scribble furiously in the notebook he keeps in his sock.

While I'd love to do the same, lock out the world until it's only me and my sketchbook, I can't concentrate. It feels wrong. Every time I have tried to draw there will be a crew member entering the room soaking wet or another so tired that they can barely hold their arms up. I'll hear yelling during the day and empty stomachs rumbling during the night and drown in guilt. I don't deserve the luxury of having endless hours to draw when these men are risking their lives every single day for those on this ship. I want to do the same – I _need_ to contribute.

So, with Caspian either distracted or absent all the time, I've been learning. I've spent the last week listening into the conversations of others and asking questions to those too distracted or too tired to care about their intent so I can prepare myself for deck duty.

I've learnt that the ropes used to keep the crew attached to the ship are stored anywhere and everywhere – available to be collected by any sailor willing to brave the chaos. Whenever he was on deck, Drinian was at the wheel which made it off limits for me, at best I think I could last five minutes before he noticed, got angry, and ordered me back to my hammock. Keeping the sail up and the mast connected to the ship required physical capabilities I don't possess, so my only option was the bilge pump.

From split-second glimpses I got when the somebody passed through the door and the snippets of information gathered, I knew there would be a line of men running from the pump to the side of the ship where all water washed onto the deck would be thrown out in bucketfuls. It's my best bet at making a difference, even if that difference is only giving one weary sailor an extra hour of sleep while I take over. Anything seems worthwhile at this point.

Now, with information as my weapon and Caspian tucked away in his office, I can finally follow through with my plan. A voice in the back of my head judges my decision, reminding me of my promise to him, but the situation has only gotten worse. I can't let two words stop me from doing what's right.

I stride down into the berthing deck, retrieve a hooded jacket and a coil of rope unnoticed, and return once again to the corridor. Through the glass door I can see Caspian pacing. My stomach clenches.

I turn away, tie one end of the rope firmly around my waist and breathe deep. Then, I step out onto the deck.

The impact is immediate.

My sight is stolen within seconds, blocked by a relentless pouring of rain which stings my face as if it were icicles. It wraps its frozen touch around my clothes and pushes the cold deep into my bones, so deep that I forget how to move until a wave rams into the side of the ship and sends me lurching into the doorway. My shoulder aches on impact but when I try to hold it, I can barely feel my own touch. There's no time, anyway.

I hurry to the mast and observe the other ropes already attached to it – bowline knots. I mentally thank Tavros for teaching me how to do them during my first week and connect myself to the ship.

I can't believe I thought the sound was extreme from inside. Here, it's multiplied beyond belief. Like fists slamming against walls and a pack of wolves howling to the moon; the applause of a sinister audience watching our struggle and a giant's heavy stomp – it's all of them at once, calling out to the land in an endless, piercing barrage of noise. Thick and teeming and actively snatching our own noise away for its own tower on the verge of collapse where it will deafen us all.

Spray from the see drenches me as I take a step away from the safety of the mast, keeping the barest tips of my fingers attached to its surface until the last possible millisecond where I have no choice but to let go. I squint and focus, concentrating on the line of men through the haze working by the bilge pump. One man, second from the railing, is almost half bent over with exhaustion.

I approach him, putting a hand on his shoulder that neither of us can feel, and pull him out of the line. I want to say something, tell him to rest or that I've got this, but there's no time. Barely a second after I take his place, I'm handed a bucket which is instantly taken by the man to my left, its contents hauled over the side and passed back.

Neither of the crew members either side of me acknowledge that I'm no longer the man who stood here a minute ago and, more importantly, nobody tells me to leave. But there's no time to dwell. Everyone reeks of distress; the kind that makes you believe you could die any second, that one slip up, a single finger out of place, could end it all. So I think of nothing except passing the bucket again and again and again while the waves launching themselves onto the deck try to knock me over and my limbs numb to where I can't imagine ever having feeling in them to begin with and each inhale is torn from me by a vengeful wind.

All that matters is passing the bucket.

Again.

Again.

Again.

* * *

Hours later, when I've begun to see the idea of diving into a raging fireplace the epitome of desirable, I'm pulled out of the line and replaced within the blink of an eye. My knees buckle at the sudden movement, the feeling in them long gone, and everything seems to sharpen. The noise, still unbearably loud; the cold, which has numbed my entire body – I doubt I would feel a sword sticking out of my side at this point; and the pain.

I'm half-dragged to the mast to untie my rope and it takes every ounce of my lingering strength to raise my arms enough to complete the task. They're shaking fiercely, and not from the cold.

When I finally detach myself from the ship, my tiredness kindly takes a back seat in my head so I can focus on not dying on the journey from the mast to the stern. I'm heavily aware of the spray coating the deck and how deadly it can be when combined with my sopping boots, bombarded with so much water that even their thick material couldn't stop it seeping through and drenching my feet, but I, along with two other sailors, make it inside alive and unharmed. The door shuts with a resolute snap, muffling the sounds from outside enough for me to register a slight ringing in my ears.

After a few weak attempts to tug at the rope still firmly around my waist, it loosens enough that I can let it fall to my feet with the knot still intact, before picking it up and passing it to a sailor waiting patiently nearby. He pats my shoulder in thanks and when I meet his eyes, his nod tells me that it's for more than just the lame gift. From beneath the towering pile of exhaustion and pain and misery comes elation. Pride.

They accept me.

I did the right thing.

I manage a smile in return and direct my shaky legs downstairs, the thought of three hours of sleep (at best) in a wildly swinging hammock akin to paradise. For the first time since the storm began, I feel like I deserve the sleep.

Then I see Caspian.

Specifically, Caspian with tense eyes and a clenched jaw, processing my bedraggled form. He strides over.

"What are you doing?" He says, voice taut.

"Helping."

"You know you can't be out there. You could have been thrown overboard." He lashes, all in a singular breath. I barely have the physical strength to stay upright, and I especially don't have the emotional strength or energy to match his frustration right now. Which, now I think about it, is probably for the best.

"I'm fine Caspian, just tired." I meet his eyes unflinchingly as they search mine. I expected him to react like this, which is why I didn't intend for him to find out, but apparently when I was crafting out my plan I forgot about the whole 'sneaking back inside unnoticed' step.

"Come on." He takes my hand and guides me into the office, planting me in the centre before leaving without another word, but slamming the door in a way that tells me to stay behind it. For once, I'm too tired to disobey.

I collapse onto the bench and push off my boots with the alternating foot, letting my arms flop uselessly to the sides. It should get easier the more I go out. Hopefully.

Caspian returns in record time and pushes fresh clothes and a towel into my arms and turns to set up a screen for me to get changed behind in the corner of the room, wedged behind a table so it won't fall. He doesn't meet my eye.

Getting the breeches off proves far simpler than the shirt. Having it plastered to my skin is one issue but raising my arms above my head is a new ball park entirely. I'm seconds away from asking Caspian to help me but knowing that would aid his argument regarding my participation on deck, sure to be fired at me the second I step out, I decide not to. I bite my tongue, clench my teeth, and get on with it, trying to ignore the way my back screams in protest.

Once dried and dressed, feeling drained it every way possible but in a more manageable, comfortable state, I sit beside Caspian and wait for him to speak. He's hunched over, elbows on knees and fingers curled round each other in front of his mouth, staring blankly into the distance. His hair is a mess, tangled and wild, from what I imagine is his hands running through and pulling it every few seconds and his face is gaunt, haunting. The dim light stretching shadows across his cheeks and under his eyes only exaggerate how sickly he looks.

"Why did you do it?" He says after a lengthy pause, voice so quiet I almost missed it.

"I wanted to." He looks to me incredulously.

"You wanted to be on a ship deck during a storm and potentially get thrown into the ocean?"

"I wanted to help." I reply, keeping my words firm.

"You promised you wouldn't go up there." Guilt sneaks a lump into my throat, using the hurt in his eyes to blow it up bigger. I try to swallow around it and remind myself to stay strong. Helping is the right choice. I can't let it be taken away from me.

"This journey means a lot to you and if there's anything I can do to help, no matter how small, I want to do it. I want to be part of the crew." I tell myself not to break his gaze as he watches me, clearly in thought.

After a while, he softens and seems to release a measure of tension from his body, shoulders slumping by a fraction. He takes my hand in his and kisses it lightly. "Thank you," He murmurs, breath hot on my skin, before laying our hands in the space between us.

"Does all of the crew get this treatment?" I joke before I can stop the words tumbling out of my mouth, feeling the heat crawl up my neck. He huffs out a laugh and runs a thumb over my knuckles.

"I'll consider implementing it."

The man calling himself King for the past week has not been Caspian. It is, technically, but not really. He's been Caspian with all the colour washed away. But now I can see the barest tinge of life returning, and I'm desperate to have him burn gold again.

"We're going to be okay, Caspian." I squeeze his hand lightly. He smiles and nods.

"I know. But please, if you want to help, the best thing you can do is keep yourself safe."

I take a deep breath. "I can't do that, not in the way you want me to. If I work on the deck for a few hours each day, then that gives another sailor more rest he desperately needs. I know it may not seem like a lot of difference, but I think we should be taking anything we can get right now."

Silence.

He chews on his lip as he faces the floor.

Then, so brief I think I imagined it until he does it for a second time, a nod.

"I'll speak to Drinian and see what he says. If he allows it, then… Then I suppose I do too." We stand. "Don't die." He tells me. I can't help but grin.

"I'll do my best."

"Goodnight, Sleeping Beauty." _Ah, he remembers_. I'll have to tell him the story at some point. But for now –

"Goodnight, Caspian."

* * *

Having been too caught up with my escapades on deck last night, I failed to process the conversation I overheard between Drinian and Caspian.

Two weeks.

Two weeks until our food is gone and we're as good as dead.

No wonder Caspian has rarely been eating, I bet the selfless bastard has been trying to stretch it out for the rest of us, all while neglecting the damage it's causing him and the obvious fact that it won't work.

With Drinian and Edmund occupied with keeping everybody alive and the rest of the crew unwilling to be firm with their King, it's time for somebody to confront him and with all the free time I've been handed it seems that job is mine. I just need to be direct, confident. Like last night. It worked then and it can work again – _will_ work again.

Caspian has been protective of me since I arrived, and I can't deny that I've come to care for him a great deal – maybe more than I should, but that can go in the ever increasing 'Repress This' portion of my brain – and always looked out for my wellbeing despite my tendency to ignore orders against better judgement. Now, it's time for me to do the same.

After finishing my own breakfast and explaining to Talos, distributor of rations, that I planned to take Caspian's to him, he assesses me for a second before handing them to me with a 'good luck'. I wonder if Caspian knows that they know, and if anyone has already tried bringing the subject up to him.

I pause outside his office, take a deep breath and knock.

"Come in," He looks up from his place on the bench as I walk in. "Amber, are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine." I pause. "Are you?"

"Of course." He smiles but it's strained. The flame from the swaying lantern in the centre of the ceiling does his appearance no favours.

I move to sit beside him, his breakfast safely tucked in a swath of fabric in my lap and take a moment to think through my words. He watches me, waiting patiently.

"I know this trip means a lot to you Caspian, and that it spiralled into something bigger than you could've imagined," A flash of lightning cracks the sky. "but you're letting it control you too much. You barely speak, you've distanced yourself from everyone, and you haven't been eating."

"I've been eating enough, Am –"

"_No_." Thunder rumbles in the distance. My voice cracks. Up close the shadows and the new hollows in his cheeks are worse and it's too familiar. I recognise the look and the denial, and I can't –

_Calm_.

I can't let him do this to himself.

"You haven't. Starving yourself isn't going to help anyone, it won't magically conjure enough rations for the crew to last us past the next fortnight." His eyebrows furrow.

"How did you know we only have enough for a fortnight? Drinian wasn't going to tell them until tonight."

"I, um…"

"You were eavesdropping?" To my initial surprise, he smiles.

"A little."

"I can't say I blame you." He goes to speak again, and it hits me. He doesn't mind that I heard because it offers him a diversion. A new conversation.

"This is beside the point." I hurry to interrupt. "You can't keep going on like this." His face falls.

"It's all my fault. I need to do _something."_

"That something is being a good King." He eyes the floor. "How do you expect to be a worthy leader if you can barely hold your head up? Besides, they knew there could be trouble, it's not your fault. You didn't ask for a storm." I unwrap the food and hold it out towards him, noticing him swallow when his eyes flick towards the biscuit. "Please?"

"I'm not hungry…" He says feebly, but his resolve is cracking.

"Just shut up and eat it." I say lightly, making him smile.

"Thank you." Like sunlight splitting the darkest of rain clouds, relief floods me in a tidal wave seeing him accept the food.

"Now. It's time you learn how to play hangman." I shuffle closer and take out my sketchbook.

"Hangman?" He asks, biscuit half way to his mouth.

I hum and flick to a blank page. "It's a game we had in London. Marco told me you don't have it here, but you're about to. Here's what you do…"

He picks the premise up quickly, though he wasn't keen on the name and the – for lack of a better word – execution of the game, and soon my sketchbook is dotted with scribbled matches, both successful and unsuccessful attempts to reveal words like Reepicheep, Narrowhaven and Snoozy Sparrow, the latter of which he promises to tell me the story of as long as I tell him of Sleeping Beauty in return.

The knowledge that this nook of peace we've carved for ourselves is heavily limited only fuels our desperation to block out our surroundings while we can, occasionally talking louder than normal to override a crackling of thunder or a worrying creak of the mast up above.

While my decision to tuck my feet underneath me and lean against Caspian was unconscious and didn't register in my head until I got up to leave, the placement of his arm on top of the seat I lent on, mere centimetres away from my shoulders, served as a significant distraction. Resisting the urge to lean back further and hope a wave knocks into the ship at just the right angle to nudge his arm forward cost me what would have been an easy win with 'crow's nest', and we soon decided that it was time to face the storm – literally.

His fingers brushing my wrist and a small smile on his face, he thanks me again before we part and my stomach jolts.

Oh no.

Oh no no no no no.

…

This won't end well.

**12 chapters in and she's only just realised she has feelings. Oh boy**


	13. Chapter 13

**aaah this is my longest chapter yet at 5,400+ words. Lets GO**

After two solid weeks of being thrown around the ship like a ragdoll in the hand of an overly enthusiastic toddler, the storm eases.

It's a slow process, so slow that we all doubt that what we're seeing is real, chalking it up to a collective hallucination brought on by the desperation which had been scratching our bones and nipping our skin until it's all we knew. At the first ray of sunshine several of us were ready to cry. When the rain stopped falling, many of us did. Then finally, with our hearts in our throats and limbs practically shaking with relief, the clouds parted, and we were free.

We cheered and we cried and even Drinian walked around with a grin stretching new lines across his weathered face, but when it came to celebrating properly – a stew and plenty of rum – we were out of luck. The empty shelves in the pantry were enough to dampen any victory.

Six days left.

In a way, the storm had been helping the situation. It served as a distraction for the entire crew but now with that tension lifted, all anybody could think about was their empty stomachs and the distinct lack of the blue star in the sky and land on the horizon. Caspian, though he had been eating more and regaining his colour, was becoming harder to persuade as time went on and has been starting to slip.

Every morning I, and I imagine the rest of the crew did as well, prayed to see land when emerging onto the deck. On the third day post-storm, that prayer was answered.

It was a gloriously sunny day, water nymphs gleefully skipping waves alongside the ship, their waving hands throwing tangles of light across the windows when the sunlight hit them, and even the typical crisp ocean air wasn't enough to stop the summer-worthy heat that basked down upon us. Boots off and sleeves rolled up, it took the edge off our impending doom for a magnificent moment.

For a change, I decided to sit on top of one of the boxes on deck rather than wedge myself behind them, leaning back against the wall with my sketchbook on crossed legs, drawing Lucy who sat admiring the view in front of me. It was ridiculous that I had never asked for her stories before. Having reigned as Queen of Narnia for over a decade, she had so many. I had heard a few second-hand from Caspian, but her tales of their Golden Age were incomparable, and the way her eyes lit up as she spoke of them made for a lively sketch. With her head tilted towards the sky and the sunlight beaming down in return, grin stretched wide and hair blowing gently – it may be my favourite piece yet.

We stayed at the edge of the ship talking long after I had finished, soon joined by Edmund and Marco who jumped at the opportunity to tell their own tales. The nostalgia and longing in their eyes, reminders of simpler days and more enthralling adventures, gave my jealously the strength to crack its knuckles and prepare to take the reins over my mind, but the sheer contentment I felt at just being here – existing with them – was enough to quell it for now. The mere fact that I was here, experiencing this, that it wasn't just a hopeful dream or fantasy to distract me from reality and I had really come here and survived slave traders and storms and learned to fight and made friends was completely and utterly enough.

An enthusiastic cry sounded from the crow's nest. "LAND, HO!" Marco cut off from his story about breaking his leg at 14 (it involved a tree, an anvil and a few tricky fairies) to lean over me and out to the sea.

And there it was, our dream come true. The barest strip of land, easily covered by my thumb if held upright, but it was more than enough. Marco and Edmund, along with many of the men on deck, scrabbled to the rowers to help get us there faster but not before Caspian hastened to the deck to see it for himself. The smile that broke out across his face when his eyes locked onto the distant shadow only made the moment better.

* * *

We reached the island in record time, fluttering around the ship preparing with perpetual grins and unable to go five minutes without looking out of a window to see if there were any new details to be seen. When we assembled on deck, my hair tied up so the cool breeze could tickle my neck and sketchbook tucked safely into a pack slung against my right hip and a sword against the left, the atmosphere was teeming with excitement. I caught Caspian's eye and smiled to which he responded to with a grin of his own, looking more alive than he has done for a while with his shoulders held up straight and foot bouncing with excess energy.

When preparing landing parties for the previous islands it was only the lucky handful who were granted the journey, but now we leave behind a skeletal crew. Dozens of men disembark in the longboats laden with casks, canisters, baskets and barrels, ready to scour for enough food to last us through the indefinite future that lies ahead, but our daydreams of fresh fruit and fish dwindle as we draw closer.

From what we can see, there's no nature. Just a singular, curving wall of burnt rock and a wide stretch of sand, with the island itself small enough that we can see both ends clearly even as we approach the bay.

"I doubt the Lords stopped here my Liege, there's no sign of anything living." Reepicheep says, voicing what the rest of us daren't.

"Take your men and search for food and water, the three of us will look for clues." Caspian responds, nodding to himself, Lucy and Edmund. A strangled scoff of indignation escapes my throat, to which he acknowledges with an upwards tug of his lips.

"Drinian," Caspian begins once we've reached the shore and unloaded the boats. When he gets the Captain's attention, he nods to me, watching on not so slyly, "pair Amber with Marco and Kiers." Drinian nods and turns to find the men in question while I prepare a speech as to why I should go with him, Lucy and Edmund instead.

Before I can even begin, he winks at me and grins. "I thought you wanted to be part of the crew?" With that, they cross the rocky terrain to explore, disappearing from sight as I struggle between the urge to grin at how pleased he was to have gotten the best of me and slipping away to explore for myself while I have the opportunity to do so. Before I can decide, there's a basket in my arms and I'm setting off across the island to search for food.

The force of the storm seems to have knocked the land legs out from me completely, and with it, the hope that they will ever come back. Marco and Kiers kindly walk at a snail's pace for my benefit and say nothing as I pause after each step, waiting for the ground to lurch upwards though I know it won't. When we reach a minor incline of rock so vividly orange it's as if chunks of the sun have fallen from space to land here, it takes a good twenty minutes to overcome it – complete with a hurled basket, scuffed hands, a stomach ache and a great deal of blasphemy.

Curving the side of the island takes us between hulks of stone high as houses with the barest patches of shrubbery on their tops. A singular vine leans over the edge of the nearest structure, taunting us.

Kiers attaches his basket to his belt with a strip of fabric before rolling up his sleeves and searching for a side with convenient nooks for his hands and feet. It was frustrating that even though the odds of there being a scrap of anything edible up there were minimal to none, there was no choice but to check. We didn't know this island or the mysterious rules that nature declared be true here, so there may as well be a berry bush up there, or if we're matching the ridiculousness of the rest of this journey, a spout that routinely produced live chickens.

Thankfully, Kiers is a remarkable climber; having been forced into poverty young by the Telmarines he had turned to petty theft to stay alive and over time he had learned to scale any building or structure for easy escapes. When Caspian took the throne and life improved, he said goodbye to a life of crime and instead found joy scaling the ratlines on whatever ship would take him. On the rare nights that some of the sailors decide to put on a short play or musical for those on deck, he also proved himself to be a remarkable singer.

"There's nothing up here, but I can see the start of a field in the East. We can head there." He calls from the top, quickly making his descent and starting off in the correct direction.

We find a convenient dip between two slopes of fallen rock to trapeze through, which guides us through a low canyon made of a darker garnet shaded rock and eventually into a gorgeous valley, complete with a gentle river and fruit trees that look as if they should belong on a different island entirely compared to its desert-esque front.

We separate and divulge the trees of what we can, filling separate canisters up with water until we're physically unable to carry anything else. By the time we're heading back to the shore, I can keep pace with them both with the ground steady under my feet.

"I heard you're the one who got King Caspian to eat again." Kiers says as we make our way through the canyon, walking single file due to the narrow, twisting path. Marco, in the middle of our line, turns around to throw me a brief smirk.

"Where did you…" I trail off from the question, unsure of how to approach this.

"We were growing concerned." He admits. "King Caspian is very dedicated to his people and has a tendency to be…" He pauses, obviously uncomfortable with speaking of his King like this, "…negligent with his own well-being, but it's hard to speak up when the act is selfless. Thank you." He looks me in the eye for the final two words, and that simple action adds a depth to his words I can't skim over.

"He's fortunate to have a friend like you." Marco adds.

My thoughts falter.

A friend.

My first.

This is what I wanted, isn't it? Somebody I cared for who cared for me in return. This is exactly what I wanted.

Then why do I feel so… guilty?

_You know why._

He's told me so much. So many adventures and travels and things he's learnt and the tales of those he's met along the way and he never pressured me to provide anything in return, despite the sly mentions that he would like to know. I ignored each and every one, and for what? So I can pretend it, my entire life in England, just… didn't happen? Is that it? Of all people he would be the last to take judgement, and perhaps the first to understand.

Maybe I deserve to have somebody listen. After all, I've come so far. I've been living at sea, I've fought slave traders and travelled to new lands and met fantastical creatures and made real friends and fallen for a King of all people – and I haven't forced a single thing. It's not like before, when I would find a group I desperately wanted part of, changing what I could so my grey would blend with their gold and their peach and their indigo. It had never worked, it was as if I had taken a photograph of them and drawn myself on it in such a way that you could tell I had been trying so hard to match the real thing, but with a hand a bit too heavy. A bit too enthusiastic. I haven't had to draw myself here with the Dawn Treader crew. Not a single line.

If there's anybody I could face the truth with, it's them. Marco. Lucy. Edmund.

Caspian.

"Find anything?" I snap away from my thoughts, brushing the alarming onslaught away like an annoying fly. I don't have to lock everything away anymore, but for now I will. Just until I'm alone.

We reach the shore and approach Talos, who called out to us.

"Plenty of fruit trees, and a stream. I'll assemble a team to take the casks down." Talos nods in approval and we disperse, loading our food onto the longboats while we wait for the others to return from their scavenges.

"Back so soon, Your Majesties?" My head whips around at the sound of Talos calling out once more to see Caspian, Edmund and Lucy returning from the opposite end of the island.

"The Lords stopped here. We found the remains of Lord Restimar and Lord Octesian." He and Edmund hold up swords in a silent explanation, the discomfort of taking them from their rightful owners painfully clear.

Everyone still on the shore, having not returned to the Dawn Treader by longboat or continued to search for food and water across the island, allowed for a moment of silence.

In the distance, far beyond the point the others had ventured to, came a column of smoke. Lucy spins to Drinian and Caspian, both looking equally concerned. "Have either of you noticed a volcano?" She asked. They shook their heads dimly, watching another plume follow.

Above the hush of the waves came another sound – a beating, forceful and unsteady – that had the others drawing their blades. "Back, over there – hurry!" Drinian hissed, ushering our group further along the island behind a half-fallen rock formation.

We – Caspian, Drinian, Edmund, Lucy, Reepicheep, Marco, Kiers, Talos, Rhince, Gael and I – crouched low to the ground and peered towards the sky. The beating grew louder and after a few more agonising seconds in which we remained still with breaths held, the source appeared.

A dragon.

A real, living, breathing, flying, non-fictional _dragon._

My stomach was torn between sinking low with dread and fear at the sight of such a famously dangerous creature and leaping high because there in front of me was a dragon – and it wasn't one I drew or painted or crafted from stolen materials – it was real!

Drinian slowly edged to the side of our barrier (the barrier between us and a _dragon_, my brain added excitedly) and looked across the beach before turning to us.

"It's between us and the longboats." He stated bluntly, face so set in determination its as if I could hear the cogs in his head turning.

Reepicheep turned to Caspian and drew his sword. "Your Majesty, if I may –"

"– You are not fighting a dragon single-handed, Reep."

He reluctantly returned his blade to its holster.

Marco, who had been watching the dragon from a gap in the rock, quickly ushered us back. "It's moving – go! Go!" There was an echoing growl and, from the peeks I could gather, a spurt of flame. Everyone scrambled backwards deeper into the island except for Lucy and me. While I stayed out of mere fascination (and a dash of stupidity, if I'm being completely honest), the small sector of my brain not actively chanting _'dragons are real, dragons are real, dragons are real' _could not work out Lucy's reluctance to leave.

"It's writing something!" She whisper-yelled after a few minutes, treading carefully as to avoid detection but keeping the rock currently being scorched in sight. "E…C… Hold on!" She waved a dismissive hand to the others, desperately trying to encourage her to move, and craned her head. "S! E, C, S. But those are initials… Surely not… Edmund – Edmund, I think it's Eustace!" At that, Edmund rushed forward and the others followed tentatively, trying to get a look at the message themselves.

The dragon assessed the crudely shaped letters on the rock and raised a clawed foot to its snout before limping backwards. "It's injured." I say absentmindedly, itching to get closer.

Drinian unlatched the spyglass from his hip and looked through, passing it to Caspian seconds later without a word. "It has a golden armband forced onto its foot. There's a design on it, I can't quite make it out." Caspian murmurs. The dragon raises a clawed foot to its injury, scratching.

"I believe it's a hammer, Your Majesty." Drinian says.

"Like the sign of Lord Octesian?" Caspian asks, handing back the spyglass.

"Exactly that, Your Majesty."

"Of course Eustace would steal something like that." Edmund says bitterly before entering the dragons view. All of us, minus Kiers and Marco who decided to keep their guard up, follow suit.

The dragon retreats at the sight of us, sinking low to the ground in an effort to appear non-threatening.

Up close, it was utterly magnificent.

A giant, golden masterpiece. With the sun still high in the sky, his scales glittered in the light and highlighted just how thin – but still _so_ strong – his wings were, currently half splayed out across the sand. His head, adorned with spines on his crown and below his chin, was twice as long as Reepicheep's whole body, with teeth equally large and impressive. _Would I be able to take one?_ I think briefly. Best not.

Lucy approaches the dragon and removes the armband and after a few moments that lack a spectacular transformation, Caspian decides that a small group will remain on shore with the dragon until morning when they can hatch a plan. Still caught up in the paralysing shock and amazement over the sheer existence of dragons, in a world I thought could get no more surprising, I barely have the capacity to process that the dragon is Eustace. Whatever one-sided conversation they had with him went missed by me, considering I was too busy thinking about how his paws are larger than my entire head. _Incredible!_

Once the remaining search parties had returned and decided that they did not, for some reason, like the idea of sleeping on shore beside a dragon, they departed back to the Dawn Treader bobbing in the bay (joined by Kiers, Marco and Talos) while those remaining set up makeshift beds around a fire kindly provided by Eustace.

I lay down after a brief dinner and let the stars overwhelm me, fixating on a singular patch until everything else faded away and I could pretend that they were all that existed. I hoped the background of the waves whispering sweet nothings to the shore and the fire crackling near my feet would serve as a lullaby, but with nothing to actively occupy my mind, my earlier thoughts about opening up hummed back to life.

Now, with a dragon a dozen feet away from me, my fear seemed ridiculous. How the idea of honesty froze my heart, but a not-so-fictional humongous lizard that could kill me with a single swipe conjured a cocktail of 70% excitement and 30% dread. I huffed out a laugh to myself.

"What's so funny?" Caspian asks, laying on his blanket beside me. I try to ignore it, his proximity, treating it like I did on Coriakin's island. But it doesn't work.

"Oh, nothing." I dismiss his question with a shake of my head.

Is now the time? Do I tell him now? It doesn't seem right. It's too sudden. My throat closes up at the mere thought of having those words escape my lips after being trapped inside for so long. Instead I wish him goodnight and roll over, pressing my face deep into the pack that serves as my pillow, willing for myself to fall asleep.

After what seemed like an eternity, I did.

Then came the dreams.

Faint whispers that I could only brush with my fingertips, as intangible as air but coiling with displeasure. They blurred together, the distant recollections of misty rain and light hands against my cheek, a glimmer of silver underneath black. There was something more, something new, as well. Everything else I had experienced for as long as I can remember, choosing to infect whatever nights they chose be it days, months or years apart. But now there was a haze of alabaster and a streak of brown, the cloud threaded with the sweet scent of flowers and the sea. Everything remained just out of reach, curving round the shape of my hands when I reached out as if to play a game I knew I couldn't win.

Wind. Faint, barely even noticeable, but warm, drifted over me and I woke. I can't even tell if it came from reality or the dregs of my dream. Nevertheless, I was awake.

_The beach_, right of course. The dragon. Caspian, who is –

Awake.

"Can't sleep?" He asks, laying on his back watching the stars, head tilted ever so slightly in my direction.

"Apparently not." _Not that I particularly want to anymore. _Silence descends on us but it's far from awkward. It lent towards the comfortable variety of quiet, like a blanket on a winter night, and yet I was eager to dispel it.

I shuffle onto my side so I'm facing him. "How come you never told me dragons exist here?" I watch his lips tug upwards in a brief smile and he lays his cheek against the sand to meet my eyes.

"I had no stories to tell of them. This is my first time meeting one."

"If we can't find a way to change him back, maybe you could ride him into your next battle." I say with a glance towards Eustace, currently asleep with Reepicheep propped up against his jaw.

He chuckles quietly. "That would be quite the sight." There's no doubt that 10-year-old me and, if I'm being honest with myself, 20-year-old me would adore a story like that. Scenes of chaos and strategy and victory were my favourites, what must it be like to really experience them? I sigh.

"Being a King must be incredible." I say absentmindedly. Beside me, Caspian shuffles and looks back towards the stars.

"I've yet to decide how I feel about it."

"So inconvenient, having willing servants waiting on your hand and foot…" He glares at me mockingly, but underneath I can see something scared. Guilty? _Oh dear._

"I'm kidding." I backtrack and rally my empathy, trying to view the circumstances without the childhood whimsy. "I couldn't imagine having that kind of responsibility, and we're the same age, right?"

"Unless you lied to me, yes."

"I'm flattered by your faith in my honesty." I say in a monotone voice. "But I mean it must be difficult, forced into that role so young." He nods slightly.

"I can't say I got much experience about what it means to be young."

"I'm sorry," _I know how that feels._ "I'll teach you, if there's an opportunity." _We can learn together._

"You already have."

"How?"

He glances to me, hesitating with his mouth open ready to speak. He swallows and shuffles onto his side, facing me directly now.

"If you abuse this information, I'll –"

"–Throw me off the ship?" I finish for him. The playful glint is back in his eye, and this feels like comfortable territory. Joking I can do.

"The opposite. I won't let you leave the ship."

I let out an exaggerated gasp. "That's beyond cruel, Caspian."

"Don't think I won't." He grins.

_'You already have.'_ Curiosity tugs at my stomach like an impatient child.

"What's this information I'm unable to abuse, then?"

He shuffles closer and lowers his voice even more. "You," He pauses and restarts. "I see the crew and how they joke with each other, and while they occasionally do the same with me, for the most part I'm treated with a great deal of distance. Respect, too, but it's still quite lonely. It's a constant reminder that I'm expected to be as mature as those twice my age." A sigh. "I like that you don't respect me. It helps me forget."

"Caspian… While that's oddly flattering, I do respect you. I just respect you as a friend rather than a King." He raises his gaze from the sand between us to my eyes and I pray he sees the sincerity, even if I'm understating. I don't think there's anybody I respect more than him.

"Thank you." His eyebrows furrow and he seems to apologise with his eyes before speaking. "Amber, what was your family like?"

_Deep breath. You're friends. This is what they do. This is fine. You're fine._

"You don't have to ans –" He begins.

"My family," I cut in before he can finish, knowing that if he gave me an out, I would take it. I can't keep running away. Not now that I know I have people to stand beside me. "was a group of matrons and 20 other children." I spare a glance to his confused expression before fixating my eyes back on the loose thread in my cuff, tugging it with my other hand. "I was left at an orphanage as a baby. Nobody remembered seeing my parents."

Not that that stopped me from searching for them when I was old enough, of course. I got the message eventually, that they didn't want to be found. It only took me five years.

"I'm so sorry." He replies after a pause. Such simple words but I can hear their depth and just how much he means it. My throat closes.

"It's okay, taught me to fend for myself after all." I force out a laugh, though it sounds more like I'm choking. Thankfully, he plays along.

"Is that how you became so stubborn?"

"If I wanted dessert after dinner, I had to fight for it." He laughs for my benefit and I silently thank him for it. The conversation pauses as we listen to the sounds of everybody sleeping.

"20 other children… It must have been fun." He says after a while. I can feel his eyes on me, testing the waters of this new territory, but I keep my eyes on the thread.

"Oh, no. Some of them were nice, but… The matrons weren't parents. There was no one we had to ground us to a good life. Many of the children took their frustration out on each other." _All day, every day._

"Did you have anyone there for you, in England?"

"Not really. I lived alone, if I ever spoke to anyone it was about the war."

"War?" At that I look up.

"Sorry, I thought you would have known somehow." Had the Pevensie's never mentioned it? "England's been at war for the past three years, though not the kind you've described to me. Many places were hit by bombs," Another confused tilt of his head. "explosive devices, they cause a devastating amount of damage." _Very_ devastating. "I'm lucky to be alive." I add as an afterthought, more to myself than him.

"Were any of those places close to you?"

"In a way." I nod slowly, feel myself sinking.

Wailing. Dust. Blood.

"I worked at a farm for a year," I begin, though I can barely register what I'm saying. Everything is growing distant. My eyes blur. "it was a long journey there each morning, but the pay was good and I liked the animals. It beat training to be a nurse, at least. I remember one day I woke in the middle of the night to sirens. I remember stumbling through my house and across the garden to get to safety, I ended up stepping on glass and having it lodge in my foot, but I couldn't light a candle to see the wound." The scar… If I lent down right now, I could find it within a second. The pain still echoes. "I just had to wait until morning."

My breath hitches.

_Drowning. Drowning. Drowning. _

"When I got to the farm, there was nothing left but rubble. Everything had been destroyed in the raid, and they were still picking out bodies."

Mitchie, my favourite horse. I was the only one he let pet his mane.

His speckled grey coat was covered with blood.

The chicken hut was crushed beyond recognition. I remember the year before when two were killed by a fox and the staff put together a funeral to honour them for Graham, he loved them so dearly.

Graham.

The man who gave me my first job at fourteen, who snuck me pieces of his wife's homemade fudge whenever he could, who treated the animals as if they were his children, and who then died alongside them.

"I… I don't want to go back there anymore." The words force themselves out, clawing and tearing at my throat until they're free and can dance across the sand without the worry of being released where they so desperately want to avoid, not a care in the world for the damage they've caused.

The tears come sudden. Hot. Scorching my skin and my eyes and burning the last shred of belief I had for a life where I could live without Narnia.

_I can't go back. I can't. I can't. I can't._

My body starts to shake, and I register Caspian moving closer, wrapping his arms around my back and allowing me to fall ungracefully against his chest, soaking the fabric through with an endless barrage of tears.

An officer pulling me away from the scene. Me, kicking and screaming and fighting his hold. The wound in my foot pulsing_._ Everything comes back in a flood, rattling through my brain and blowing the memory up bigger and bigger so it pushes against my eyes and forces more tears out. They sting and I squeeze them shut, forcing the images back while trying to drag my current surroundings around me for protection.

The waves break through first, the rhythmic hush drowning out the voice telling me to stay back. Caspian's voice is next, reminding me that I'm okay and that I'm safe, steadily overpowering the scream that tore through my throat. Finally, his touch. Hands steady against my shoulder and my back, his chin against my forehead and heartbeat against my cheek.

Heartbeat. Life. Safe.

_Safe. Safe. Safe._

After a while, I can't work out how long, I calm.

"I'm so sorry." I hear Caspian say.

Somehow, I find my voice. "I know it's my home, but it's just so terrifying. Any day could be my last, I just –" _Breathe._ "I'm sorry, this was too much."

"I'm sorry for asking, I wish I could help in some way." I consider repeating his own words back to him. _You already have._

"You shouldn't have to take on that burden." He hesitates. I hear how his breathing stutters like a stuck vinyl.

"If you could stay here, go to Narnia and start a life away from the war… Would you?"

"I don't know. I can't say for certain I don't think. Is that strange?"

"Not at all." He answers immediately. The conversation dies naturally, and I use the time to collect myself. Dust away the cobwebs of nightmares and chase my rampaging rhino of a heart back into its cage.

"You should rest, we'll have an early start in the morning." Caspian breaks the silence eventually, voice soft. His hold loosens.

"Can I…?" I trail off, unsure of how to ask, so instead I just awkwardly nudge my head against his shoulder.

"Of course." He smiles and returns his hands, manoeuvring onto his back and pulling me in.

The memories still linger, lurking in the dark corners but curling a singular, clawed hand around the edge of the light so I know they're there. Waiting.

I have to face them at some point, properly, but despite everything tonight was a step in the right direction. I can't deny feeling lighter now it's out there.

I glance towards the sky bursting with stars to remind myself of where I am right now. Then, I let the sound of Caspian's heartbeat and the crackle of a dwindling fire send me to sleep once again.

**Phew. That was a lot.  
Time to leave the internet for three years bc i'm seeing avengers endgame tomorrow. see u in therapy lads x **


	14. Chapter 14

I wake disorientated.

For a moment I forget everything. Where I am, what I'm doing, and even _who_ I am to an extent.

Everything comes back slowly. If last night was an explosion, this morning was the immediate aftermath – air so thick with dust and smoke that you can barely see two feet ahead of you and all you know is the ringing in your ears. Slowly, it dissipates, and I'm left having to confront a new reality.

Because that's what this is now. New. Different. Irreversible. He knows the truth, and I know by that by having spoken it there's no way to force it back into the deep recesses of my mind. If you let a bear out of its cage, it would be a tall order to make him go back inside without a tranquilliser. The only suppressant I could use is in the bowels of the Dawn Treader, managed by men instructed to give me none after my… _enthusiasm_… during Coriakin's feast. Though the help would only be temporary, useful for poking a stick at the beast for a while, before it began another rampage. The cage is as good as gone.

I didn't even have to tell him everything for it to raid my mind like a tornado. He knows I'm alone with a family who care nothing for me out in the world, but I'm not sure I could mention the rest. The five year search for them. The places I travelled to. The things I gave up to find them.

And the fact that I only gave up 3 months before I arrived here.

I open my eyes and pause. I'm still curled against Caspian's side, his one arm around my shoulder and the other laying on top of my own in the centre of his chest. Thankfully, he's still asleep.

I inch myself away, careful not to wake him, until I can sit up properly and stretch.

The sun stands above the horizon and blesses the morning with a stroke of pink that ascends into a clear, perfect blue, undisturbed except for one thing.

The blue star.

Gael reacts quicker than I do, nudging Lucy and calling out to the others while I sit there, shocked at the sight because for us it wasn't just a star – it was hope.

Everyone wakes and clears the shore in record time, sparing glances every few moments to check that the star hasn't blinked out of existence and before we can process how important this is, we're on the Dawn Treader and sailing in the correct direction.

The wind is mild as if in apology for its two week long tantrum and the journey is slow, giving Eustace the time to fly over the island and gift us with a wild goat for breakfast, along with three for himself. We settle ourselves across the deck with our stews and peaches and watch as a handful of crew members perform a botched rendition of an old Narnian tale with renewed spirit.

I can't help but avoid Caspian.

I spend my morning lingering around Lucy and Gael, acting as if I'm an active participant in their antics when really I can't find the strength to focus my eyes, so instead I stare out across the landscape with blurred vision, the sea and the sky melding into one infinite expanse of blue.

Last night's conversation replays on my mind, unrelenting in its determination to break me apart.

_I don't want to go back there anymore._

I had been avoiding thoughts of London for so long; everything was going to smoothly. Now it's a thorn in my foot, burrowing deeper with every moment I spend believing that I belong _here_, in Narnia, like it's punishing me for thinking that I deserve that.

_If you could stay here, go to Narnia and start a life away from the war… Would you?_

I couldn't say yes. My life in England and my affection for it is splinted glass, and that single syllable would shatter it beyond repair. I would never be satisfied. We could win the war and I wouldn't feel anything except a gaping emptiness, a longing incapable of being fulfilled even if they gave me the Queen's riches. I only want this. I've grown so used it all – the clean air and the weight of a sword against my hip, conversing with minotaurs and thinking of Narnia and Aslan each day, and the company of people I can be myself around and who I know I would do anything for, for the right reasons.

I sigh and Lucy nudges my shoulder lightly. "Are you alright? You've been distant since this morning." She asks. It startles me from my thoughts, and I turn to see if Gael is listening, only to see her dancing to what appears to be a nursery rhyme with Ebele, a faun.

I decide to be honest for once. "I told Caspian about the war." Her face falls, emotions kept at bay bubbling to the surface and it's my fault. My heart clenches.

"We try to forget about it when we're here." She says weakly. It hurts to see the invisible scars of war across her face. I know they're on mine too.

"It's nice to feel free for once, isn't it?" She nods enthusiastically.

We sit in silence for a while, resting against the same crates as the day before, caught up in memories.

"Where in London do you live?" She asks after a while.

"Dulwich, near the gallery." I wonder if anyone else has discovered the painting of the Dawn Treader yet. "Do you know it?"

"I do, I always wanted to visit but there was never time." She sighs and looks out across the sea. "Maybe when it's rebuilt."

"Rebuilt?"

"Apparently they have a storage facility that didn't get damaged, so they're going to fill the new building with the art from there."

"But the gallery was never destroyed?" It feels like my stomach is solidifying. Dulwich had never been hit. I would know. Even when I wasn't actively visiting it, I passed by it on my way to work each day.

Lucy tilts her head and looks at me as if I'm crazy, the kind that you treat with extreme caution. "Amber, it was hit by one of the raids last December." She says softly.

I choke out a laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the thought. "I went there every week, I would know if it had been hit." There would be a plaque, or some area they hadn't been able to repair, something, anything, that marked it as a bomb site. But there wasn't, because it. Had. Not. Been. Hit.

She's quiet for a while, contemplating with knit eyebrows and her mouth drawn in a tight line. She must have confused it with another gallery. Must have.

"Do you…" She starts hesitantly. "Do you remember what day it was when you ended up here?"

"Not specifically, no. It was a Wednesday I know that much." She looks disappointed. "I think it may have been late November or early December, in 1942." I add, hoping that helps.

She leaps away from me as if burned, scrambling to the other side of the deck and dragging Edmund away from a confused Marco. She's stricken, and I feel that same panic infect me as she returns.

She points to me and speaks to Edmund. "She's from the past." Her voice is shaking.

"What?" Edmund and I respond simultaneously.

"I know time works differently between Earth and Narnia, but you left London _six months_ before we did."

"Is that a problem?" Edmund draws the question out like he's hoping to see Lucy startle and say 'Actually, no, it isn't! You can leave now, Edmund!'

"Surely if we tell you what happens, that's immensely dangerous?" She directs the question to me and I flounder, the consequences of this too large to process in such a short amount of time.

"Then we don't tell her what happens. Lucy, I don't think we need to worry over this."

"She already did tell me." He falls silent. "She told me about a gallery that gets destroyed in a raid that hasn't happened yet. I go there every week." Edmund gulps and shuffles his feet, avoiding both our gazes.

"If there's a problem, Aslan will help. Just… don't keep talking about it." He finally replies, the discomfort of having to confront the life that's waiting for him in England painfully evident. I don't blame him for not wanting to talk about it. He returns to the opposite side of the deck swiftly, smiling at Marco as if nothing is amiss.

"Do you think he will?" I ask Lucy. She tilts her head, confused. "Aslan, do you think he'll help?" I elaborate.

She nods slowly, eyes distant, and wrings her hands together. "Yes, of course. He always does." She answers, still nodding as if the act will jolt her head into the correct, unworried state.

Would this really affect me in the end? Would I have even wanted to return to Dulwich when I returned, knowing I would see everything I had lost within the confines of a picture frame? Or am I just thinking that now I know I could die there? It doesn't even feel real.

"You should speak to Caspian." Lucy says. "Not about…" She waves a flippant hand, gesturing to the last 10 minutes. "He keeps looking over here, but I don't think he can find an excuse to talk to you."

"How do you know he doesn't want to talk to you?" She flicks me on the forehead playfully, attempting to look serious but with the beginnings of a grin twitching the corners of her mouth. Her eyes remain tense.

"I shouldn't have to answer that! We already know the answer. Why are you avoiding him?"

"I'm not avoiding him." I lie, pathetically, I might add.

Talos calls out to say that lunch is ready, those on deck letting out sparse cheers and descending to the berthing deck, the scent of salmon and lemon intertwining with the salty air. Lucy and I push away from our perch and follow, but when I receive my rations and notice Caspian in conversation with Drinian, I convince Marco that we should go back onto the deck and play hangman while we eat so I can – in short – continue to avoid him.

We ascend to the forecastle and dip into the cool shade by the dragon-shaped bowsprit, picking at our food between matches and existing purely in this bubble of peace, worries left on the opposite side, peering through as if it were glass.

"Are you purposefully doing a theme?" I ask him eventually, flicking through the games in which he chose the words.

Knight. Broadsword. Drawbridge.

"No…" He looks through the words. "Alright, maybe." He closes the sketchbook and fiddles with the strings that seal it. "I think I want to be a knight."

He's never spoken about his future before. Though I knew he was here to escape his overbearing blacksmith father, determined to recruit him into the family business, Caspian was the one who told me. Marco acted as if he had no family to speak of. Until now.

"I'm not ready yet and I know the training is intense, but I really think it's where I belong." It's as if he's practising a speech to relay to his father.

I reach over and take his hand. "If that's what you want, then go for it. Caspian would be lucky to have you in his army."

"A knight is an honourable decision, my friend!" We startle, looking up to where Reepicheep rests above us. He jumps down, removes the feathered circlet from his ear and dips into a bow. "It would be a pleasure to have you serve alongside me." I stifle a laugh as he rights himself with a flourish. Marco nods in thanks, shoulders slumped in relief. That was probably the first time he's ever admitted that.

"Why did you agree to this journey, Reep?" I ask. Over time, I've learnt why many people on board decided to join the Dawn Treader's crew. Caspian for his search of the Lords, Marco to evade his father, Kiers to right his past wrongdoings, Tavros as a debt to Caspian when he was saved from giants, Lucy, Eustace and Edmund because they had no choice. Reepicheep's was not among those I knew.

"I hope to reach the end of the world." He says simply.

"But the world has no end?"

"Of course it does, everything has an end."

"My world doesn't." Marco and Reepicheep regard me strangely.

"How do you mean?" I all but jump out of my skin, whipping my head around to where Caspian leans against the edge of the ship, listening in. _How long has he been there for?_

"Well, it's circular." I say, searching his expression for some kind of change, as if by looking hard enough into his eyes I would see myself under the stars or the words he spoke last night etched across his lips.

"You live on a round world?" He steps over to join us in the shade.

"Yes…" I look between their stunned expressions. "Is Narnia not the same?"

"Certainly not." Says Reepicheep.

"Lucy and Edmund, they live on the same?" Caspian asks and I nod. He huffs out a laugh and shakes his head. "All this time and I never knew."

Beside me, Reepicheep clears his throat and gestures to Caspian's amazement. "For us, a round world is that of fairytales."

"They were my favourites. Do you remember The Swan's Wife?" Caspian asks the others. They agree gleefully, smiles of childlike wonder beaming wide.

Part of me wants to ask what it was, but I can't help being distracted with Caspian's presence. Is he thinking about last night? Can he tell I'm avoiding him? He seems the same, the casual but poised posture and small smile I'm inclined to believe is permanent, though not by any royal requirement. It's just who he is.

"Your Majesty!" Drinian calls from the wheel. Caspian leaves us with three respectable nods, and I can't tell if the way his gaze lingered on me was a figment of my imagination or not. The moment passes in an instant and I watch on as they cross the deck and retreat inside, presumably to the office. I'm torn between the relief of having my mind steady once more and the urge to call him back.

"Might I ask why you're avoiding him?" Reepicheep asks.

"I'm not avoiding him." I lie, again.

* * *

After a few more games of hangman, newly joined by Reepicheep who favoured enthusiasm and wild guesses over strategy, we disperse along the ship as one does with time. While Reepicheep rested atop Eustace's head to speak freely and Marco returned to Edmund, the boys having grown closer with time, I scaled the ratlines and convinced the lookout to let me rest on the crow's nest beside him.

We talk little and soon descend into a mildly uncomfortable silence but taking out my sketchbook eases the air for me. Since having received it, I've gradually fallen back into my old ways that render me untouchable by the outside world. It's as if with every stroke of graphite, the world shrinks until it can be contained in the paper and leather laid against crossed legs.

Though it's not as simple as it once was. When I was young and desperate to breathe air not shared with at least three other children who were determined to push me to the ground and keep me there, I would hole up in whatever free closet or dusty, forgotten cupboard I could find with a flashlight and draw. The world was far easier to forget then when there was a physical barrier in the way, but on the crow's nest the wind dances across my face and the mast creaks with each ebb and flow over the waves. So when the lookout descends the ratlines, my world isn't quite small enough for it to go unnoticed. Assuming his shift is over, I wait for the next lookout to arrive so I can explain why I'm here, hoping that it will be somebody I'm not familiar with so there's no unspoken requirements to keep a steady flow of conversation.

After a few moments of seclusion, Caspian hoists himself onto the crow's nest beside me.

He doesn't need to say anything for me to know that he knows, but he does anyway.

"Did I do something wrong?" He says with a light, but notably strained tone. My shoulders slump and I accept that I can't run for a third time. I told myself to open up more, didn't I?

"No, of course not. That was just the first time in a while that I've thought about it all. It was a lot to handle." I try to say it casually, as if memories weren't still pressing against my skull. He catches my eye.

"If you decide you don't want to go back, I'll see what I can do."

"You don't have to–"

"Please." _He really doesn't mind it, does he?_

"Thank you." I whisper, swallowing a lump in my throat. He doesn't push the subject or try to wheedle more information from me like I feared, though reason dictates that it never should have been a worry; that's not in his nature, but the consequences of coaxing everything to the surface have yet to finish.

"Can I see?" He points to the sketchbook, and I hand it to him with a nod.

I wish this, the change of subject, was something I could thank him for openly, but for now I must settle with hoping he can merely sense my gratitude.

He smiles when he sees my in-progress attempt at drawing Eustace as his new scaly self.

"If we knew how to change him back, I probably would have dived into that treasure myself." I say. For the past few hours I had been watching him glide and dive in the air around the ship, testing his new capabilities, and with each skim of his claws against the water or accidental sneeze of fire, I felt jealous. I can't even begin to imagine how that power must feel.

"You would want to be a dragon?" He says sceptically.

"Would I want to fly and breathe fire? _Yes." _He raises his eyebrows. "Wouldn't you?"

"I quite like being human, being able to speak to others."

"Conversation has never been a strong suit of mine." I reply, looking down across the deck.

"I have to disagree, I love talking with you. You're unlike anyone I've ever met."

"Aren't I difficult to be around?" I turn to face him. He hesitates.

"Well, sometimes, I suppose." He finally says after I nudge his shoulder. "But since becoming King, a difficult person is hard to come by. I appreciate it." He rushes to add.

The words are familiar.

_I like that you don't respect me. It helps me forget._

I see in his expression that he's there, thinking about last night like I am. His limbs are just a little bit looser, eyes flicking to the sky like he's expecting stars amongst a twilight sea. They soften when they meet mine, and I scramble to change the subject. All my mind takes in is where that conversation led; I'm not ready to let that back in yet.

"What's The Swan's Wife?" I blurt.

Immediately his posture shifts, straightening as he repositions himself and clears his throat. I'm smiling before he's even begun. He accepts the abrupt shift with open arms and begins, his voice like a gentle hand smoothing out tangled thoughts.

"There were once two swans named Amala and Freya. They lived amongst hundreds of others in the village of Par and met in their tenth year, watching their elders fly and explore the land beyond. They had only ever known Par and grew jealous of those who got to feel the wind between their feathers, while they were unfairly destined to a life on ground, never knowing what lay past their lakes and their grain.

Over time, they grew closer. Through sparing what minutes they could and sharing their dream of exploring the world, they soon fell in love. One night, Amala came to Freya and proposed they fled. Freya agreed immediately, and they spent twelve years travelling across the globe, discovering rivers that flowed lavender and mountains so blue and bright they mistook them for pieces of fallen sky.

Fifteen years after they first fell in love, Freya grew ill. They had found a heart shaped island in the middle of the sea and called it home, enjoying how the sea reflected the sky at night and made them feel like nothing existed but them. When Freya died in her sleep, Amala was overcome with too much grief to be contained within such a small body. So she grew and grew and grew until her wings could wrap around the world twice, but still she mourned. She missed her wife dearly and swallowed the world to keep the essence of her inside until she too passed on." He concludes. With the way he spoke so smoothly and confidently, I imagine he's had it memorised since childhood.

"Hold on. She swallowed the _world_?" I say incredulously once he's finished.

"She knew traces of Freya lay everywhere. In Par and their home and everywhere they travelled, and she wanted them with her to feel closer to her. It's beautiful." He smiles to himself.

"It's certainly unlike anything I've heard before."

"Can I hear one of yours?" He asks. I let out a breath and think – are there any I can recall with the same grace he recited? Jack and the Beanstalk, maybe. Before I can start, there's a call from below.

We note the issue before we reach the deck for Drinian to tell us himself.

The air has stilled.

The Dawn Treader sits lost among the sea, bobbing in the centre like one would nervously shuffle their feet if called upon, stuck without its friend in the wind to encourage it forward. On deck the men are quiet, standing alert beside their Captain for orders though he offers none. He looks as concerned as the rest of us.

Moving the ship using the rowers alone is already an impossible feat, and our newly replenished food and drink stock makes the weight no better. Seeing our dilemma, Eustace dives low beside the ship to hear the discussion but is soon forced away when the forceful beat of his wings tips the boat sideways. The blue star twinkles mockingly in the sky above.

A few moments later, everything jerks forward. The floor is swept underneath us and startled cries of men forced to the floor fill the air, crashing into the railings and the walls, with Fiedan rolling unfortunately into the open pantry hatch with a bang.

"Eustace, that's brilliant!" Edmund yells, clinging to the railing as he stares open mouthed at the bowsprit.

Wrapped around the armoured dragon's snout is Eustace's tail, his wings flapping furiously as we sail with a newfound speed. Caspian offers a hand to help me stand. "Are you alright?" He asks when I rub my head, having hit it against the mast when I fell.

"Who are you again?" I tilt my head and feign confusion.

He smiles and rolls his eyes. "No injury sustained, then."

* * *

A few hours after Eustace begins pulling the ship, the wind returns with fervour and the hulk of Ramandu's island peeks at us from the horizon.

Drinian estimates our arrival to the middle of the night, and orders everyone not rowing or assisting on deck to their hammocks the second we finish dinner, though no one expects an easy night. The tension in the air is thick and speculation about what we will find echoes in each creaking floorboard.

When my body finally lets me rest, I dream of my parents.

An anguished cry rattles my mind and the source is unsatisfied. It's not enough – the volume, the encapsulation of their pain in a singular, echoing note, and way it scrapes their throat raw. Not enough. Never enough. There was never a way to capture that pain in any expression, be it words or violence or any other method I would throw myself at. Always, without fail, I ended my rampages needing more.

I stand in darkness and it smells of dust and despair. The air taunts me, pulling my hair and jabbing my arms like the other children would do, before They emerge.

They're just shadows, though they embodied more than an absence of light. They weren't lacking anything, it was more as if they contained _everything,_ churning all that ever was into an impenetrable void. The air carries their words to me.

_Not enough. Worthless. Unlovable. Pathetic. Not enough._

_Not enough. Not enough. Not enough. Not eno – _

I wake abruptly, my hammock swaying with the sudden movement. From two rows over, I hear Marco snore loudly and relax a fraction. While the darkness down here remains unsettling, and I half expect their midnight forms to creep out from behind a wall, the sounds are a comfort.

I let out a rattling breath and drag a weary hand across my head, trying to smooth out my thoughts like you would wrinkles in cloth. I twist myself to look underneath my hammock, towards Caspian's, but it's empty bar from a blanket bunched at the end as if he kicked it off. Curious. I jump down and tread lightly, despite knowing these men could sleep through anything, wrapping my blanket around my shoulders as I head upstairs towards the deck.

I'm grateful for the wind that hits my face when I surface, the brutal salty air grounds me as an anchor would secure a ship, and it whips away the lingering stiffness in my limbs.

I've never seen the deck so empty before. Two men sit by the wheel with playing cards in hand, their quiet murmurings balancing with the hush of waves and the creak of the mast. A lookout rests with his legs dangling between the bars of the crow's nest, staring out towards the ever-expanding island in front of us. Eustace continues to fly straight, occasionally dipping low and catching himself before he hits the water. And there, at the back of the ship out of sight of all four, is Caspian.

He leans against the dragon's tail, head tilted up the stars and hands in his pockets. He doesn't hear me approach.

I lay a hand on his arm and he jumps, his palm instinctively coming to rest against my own as he blinks away whatever fog cloaked his mind.

"Are you alright?" I ask, my voice quiet as to not attract the attention of others.

"Just lost in my head." He replies with a soft smile.

I shrug the blanket from my shoulders and move to wrap it around his own. "Here."

"Keep it." He wraps cold fingers around mine and lowers my arms. I shake from his grip and raise my eyebrows.

"I don't need it, I've been inside. How long have you been out here for?"

"An hour or two." He admits. While he spares a glance to the view beyond, I drape it across his shoulders and secure the ends in a knot near his collar.

"There. It's like a cape." I grin and turn towards the sky, letting out a soft gasp at the sight. "I've never seen stars like this before."

With the air in England polluted beyond belief, and most nights from the past three years being spent in windowless shelters, I rarely saw stars, but that didn't mean I never dreamt of them. I longed for skies of the darkest midnight with speckles of dazzling light sprayed across the surface like freckles on sun kissed cheeks. But this… This is beyond the realms of my imagination.

While the sky is flecked with countless blinking stars, that simple beauty is split in two by a bolt of sapphire that seems to contain more shades of blue than I ever believed to exist, patterned in swirls and curls like ink dipped in water in the seconds before it dissipates.

"They're unlike any of the constellations in Narnia. I imagine only a handful of people, beside those on this ship, have ever seen them." Caspian says, eyes fixated on them too.

"So they don't have names?"

"They don't. It seems a shame." He sighs.

"Why don't we name them?" He considers me for a moment, tilting his head to the side ever so slightly before nodding with a smile, untying the blanket around his neck and laying it across the stern deck.

We lie down beside each other on the thin cover, huddling close to avoid the cold from the floor seeping into our bones. I'm heavily aware of how securely the length of his arm presses against my own, and how much I want to push further in consequence.

Seconds stretch by lazily, allowing for the quiet collaboration of noise to fade into a comfortable background hum as we lay in silence tracing the band of sapphire and its stars with leisurely gazes. There's no pressure to speak, just an understanding that this is enough. Whatever _this_ is.

It's not until half an hour of searching later that I find something. "Look – it's a swan!"

"Where?"

I point to the sky peeking out from behind the crow's nest, roaming my eyes over the dozen stars that shape the bird in flight until they seem to shine brighter than the rest. When I turn to Caspian, he's still twisting his head different directions to try and find it.

I take his hand in mine and lean close enough that his eyelashes brush my cheek, directing his hand to the centre of the swan. "There. Do you see it?" I turn my head to face him and the stars fade into the back of my mind, yet they've never seemed closer.

His eyes, impossibly close to my own, look as if they contain the entire galaxy. His mouth is parted slightly and I feel his breath, both of us suddenly short on supply, mingle with my own.

His eyes dart down for a second.

I note mine do the same.

It would only take a nudge, the slightest downward tip of my chin. That's all.

He swallows, eyes darting between my own.

A loose curl of hair tumbles across my forehead and the moment is blinked away. I jolt back to stare at the stars, back firmly planted against the floor. If I press any further, I might just fall through. My stomach churns and my heart pauses to recollect itself, my surroundings trickling back into my head like a leak.

One of the men by the wheel laughs. I freeze_. Did they see? Did the lookout see? I shouldn't be here. Was that a birthmark he had under his eye? How had I not noticed that before? No – I should go. This was a bad idea. _

Before I find the courage to leave, there's a brush as light as a feather against the back of my hand. The feeling curves over my wrist and his fingertips graze my palm. It's a question.

I lay my palm flat against his in response and feel his fingers slot between mine and squeeze. Now it's a message.

_Stay._

And I do.

Silence descends upon us once again, thicker this time. It's no easy beast to break, but he does so regardless.

"What should we name it?" His words are low and more drawn out than usual.

"What?"

"The constellation."

I think for a minute, eyes once again finding the shape.

"Amala, after the widow from The Swan's Wife."

"Amala it is."

We let the quiet embrace us.


	15. Chapter 15

The air holds its breath as we approach the island, passing underneath a thundering waterfall and down a conveniently Dawn Treader sized river between towering rocky mountains. Not a single person speaks on the deck, all craning their necks to see what lies beyond the cliffs we're nestled within.

We arrive, as Drinian predicted, in the middle of the night. Men raise their lanterns high above their heads, pockets lined with spare matches, but it's an unnecessary precaution. We're not bathed in darkness here, the blue star illuminates everything with a deep marine glow. It may still be dark but we're not blind. For now.

The ship stops on its own accord, the gangway lined up with a thick, sloping tangle of roots that brush the edge of the ship and dip down to level ground, smoothing out into a dirt path marked with an archway enclosed with willow trees. The branches glide open, inviting us in.

Caspian and I share a glance, this magic new to us both, and prepare to exit with the others. Neither of us mention how we were stood with my shoulder leaning against his chest and his hand on my arm, or how we continue to walk closer than necessary.

A few hours after we first lay under the stars, the lookout yelled down towards the men at the wheel and sent one of them to Drinian to inform him that we had arrived at Ramandu's island and we accepted, silently, that our time was up. Crew members emerged onto the deck minutes later laden with equipment and we faded quietly into the crowd, palms still warm and blanket abandoned to the side.

Now we make our way through the island, up blanketed woodland paths that shatter the blue light into shards across the tree roots, our larger surroundings always cloaked by nature or bathed in shadow. All we can tell is that we're heading up.

We cross a stone bridge guarded by eroded stone birds twice the size of Reepicheep and crawling with weeds that glisten curiously in the light. I look over the side and see nothing but darkness. While the other men continue on with light steps, I drop a loose stone into the gaping nothingness to strain to hear it land. It never does.

It takes us an hour, with a few more curiously sentient trees to direct us down the correct path, to reach the peak of the island. At the top of a steep incline is a tree with two trunks that arch into a doorway and twist high towards the stars. Beyond the archway is a chamber.

At least, it was a chamber at some point in time. Now only the floor and the left wall remain intact, with the far end being blocked off by a large willow tree and the right side showcasing a 330ft fall off an unforgiving cliff-side. Other than the rocks standing tall like a shark's awaiting jaws, the view was magnificent. In the centre of it all was a grand table laid with more food than I could ever imagine, but the mouth-watering sight was marred by the hulks of tangled tree branches at the end of it all.

Drinian commanded everyone to wait as Edmund approached the shapes, painting them in the glow of his flashlight. Lucy gasped and several men drew their swords at the sight of the bearded men caught within the branches. My heart seemed to stop beating entirely at the sight – was that going to be us? Were there people lurking in the shadows waiting to ambush us?

Edmund's light travelled down towards their hands laid flat against the table and Caspian advances suddenly. "They're Lords." He says breathlessly, taking the flashlight to focus on their rings.

An obsidian star set in silver. "Lord Revillian."

An intricately woven knot of gold. "Lord Argoz."

A simply outlined crescent moon. "Lord Mavramorn."

He stares closely at the face of Lord Revillian, sat closest to him. "They're still breathing." He remarks.

Drinian knocks an apple from Tavros's paw and crushes it under his boot. "Don't eat the food! That could be what got them into that damn state."

"Caspian – Their swords." Edmund claws within the net of roots spanning the table and removes a blade identical to the ones slung at the hips of him, Caspian and Lucy. He digs further and points towards a smaller knife. "It's the stone dagger… This must be Aslan's table!" He and Caspian retrieve the swords and place their own beside them on the table.

"There's still one missing." I say, coming to stand by them.

But it was supposed to be _here._ This was it – this was the end, wasn't it? I run a frustrated hand through my hair and tug. Could it be elsewhere on the island? Do we have to wait until morning and search? It'll be like a needle in a bloody haystack. Brilliant.

"Look." Lucy exhales, staring between the canopy of trees.

An insubstantial shape glowing a fierce ice blue floats down from its perch in the sky. I step forward absentmindedly but get stopped by Caspian's hand resting against my wrist. He draws his second sword and watches as it lands gracefully beside the table and takes formation.

"Travellers of Narnia, welcome." It, or rather, she says upon landing. Her face, small and soft, was framed by hair as white as freshly fallen snow and contained the same curious glitter despite the fact our main light source was, well, her. "Are you not hungry?" She asks when no one responds.

"Who are you?" Asks Edmund, lowering his sword.

"I am Lilliandil, daughter of Ramandu." She smiles. "I am your guide."

"You're a star?" Caspian asks. When she nods, I look to the sky, noting an important distinction. She's not just _a_ star, she's _the_ star.

"Please, the food is for you." She glides beside the table, the trail of her ivory gown hovering almost imperceptibly above the ground. "There is enough for everyone at Aslan's table. Help yourselves."

"Wait! What happened to them?" Edmund points towards the enchanted Lords and her expression turns solemn.

"These poor men were half mad by the time they reached our shores. They were threatening violence upon each other, which is forbidden at the table of Aslan, so they were sent to sleep." At that, the crew dig into the feast, no longer fearing an eternal slumber. "They will wake when all is put right. Come, there is little time."

She approaches the willow tree and the leaves separate to reveal a dimly lit path. As I head to follow her, Edmund and Lucy, Caspian stops me with regret. Before I can even protest, he jumps in.

"I promise I will tell you everything." He hurries to say. I roll my eyes and smile lightly.

"So many promises…" _Is that number five now? Six?_

"And have I broken a single one?"

He's got a point. I cross my arms. "There's still time."

He lays a hand on my arm and leans in, grinning. "Time I will use making more promises that I will continue to keep." He nods to the feast. "Save me some." The willow closes behind him and I shake my head with a huff of a laugh before taking a seat between Marco and Kiers at the table.

There's almost too much choice. Richly stuffed meats and fish dressed in sweet sauces, fruits carved into boats and wine in goblets shaped like flowers in bloom; the latter of which I ignore responsibly. I settle for a slice of pecan pie that has been uniquely shaped as a resting dragon, sending a silent apology to Eustace – forced to find level land at the edge of the island far below us – in the process.

No matter how much we eat, the food never seems to end. Rum refills in blinks and grapes restore in breaths, and we keep eating, powerless to know when we may taste such sweetness again. By the time Caspian, Lucy and Edmund return, expressions far grimmer than they were before, Tavros has devoured three peacocks and acts all too eager to continue.

Drinian stands and a hush falls over the men, halting Marco's retelling of a dream he had involving his transformation into a dufflepud. "What happens now, Your Majesty?" He asks.

Caspian spares a glance over his shoulder through the willow to where I can glimpse a dash of green amongst darkness before meeting the Captain's eyes.

"We prepare for battle."

**Did I end the chapter there because I was imagining a dramatic zoom in on Caspian's face that would then immediately cut to a black screen? Abso-fucking-lutely. But also it didn't fit into the flow of the next chapter, which is already shaping up to be really long, which is why this one is so short. It's like a stepping stone, in a way. **


	16. Chapter 16

**So… I'm weak. I wrote this in one sitting and it may be my favourite thing from this entire story and I just had to get it up ASAP. (If you're reading this after it's completed then for context: I'm uploading this 5 hours after chapter 15) It's just one scene with a focus on Caspian but I had to get it up. And now, since it's almost 2am, I think I'll sleep. **

* * *

Following a concise recap by Caspian of the task they were to complete, told in such a clear, calm tone that Amber was especially taken aback by given the contents of the discussion, the Dawn Treader crew gave a reluctant farewell to Ramandu's island and tried not to view their feast as a dead man's last meal.

They returned to the ship in silence. After setting sail for Dark Island to retrieve the final sword, newly joined by Eustace who had been caught up on the new developments by Reepicheep perched on his snout, men strode through the ship with faux confidence, assembling armour, sharpening weapons, and keeping their eyes firmly away from their sinister fate despite the green hand digging claws into their jaws and trying to force their gaze.

Caspian and Edmund prepared in the office and watched Ramandu's Island shrink through the bay windows, the stars in the sky smothered one by one by a thick cloud of grey. When the latter left with Caspian's bequeathed sword, he took a moment to wonder how his simple quest had changed so drastically. He knew bringing peace to Narnia in the first three years of his reign would not mean peace across all lands, or believed the achievement to be eternally binding, but he had hoped for the journey to be one of hope, adventure, and roaring success. Though it hadn't been all bad. After all, he and the crew had rid Narrowhaven of the slave traders, and are in the process of returning their lost citizens, he got to reunite with Edmund and Lucy, and met –

_Knock knock._

He smiled, seeing her silhouette through the glass door.

"Come in."

Amber entered with a wary grin and hovered near the door. "I saved you some cake." She held up a small parcel.

"I'm afraid I'm not hungry." He smiled softly and watched her eyebrows raise sceptically, walking further into the room.

"Are you sure? Nothing like a bit of sugar to get you ready for a fight." She unwrapped the cake and waved it under his nose before breaking off a piece for herself.

There was a glint in her eye that he had come to recognise over time.

Caspian sighed and leaned against the table, securing his hands to the edge as to hide the minor tremble that had begun with each inch of the Dark Island's grasp they sunk into. "Should I waste my breath trying to convince you to stay below deck?"

He swiped a finger over the icing, thinking back to Redhaven of the Seven Isles and their deliciously sweet pastries and his heart ached at the thought that he would never be able to show them to her. The creamy religieuse and soft maamouls. But the tulumbas… He knew they would be her favourites, she savoured the meals they adorned with lemon more than any. They could have danced in the village square afterwards to a bard's tune, let the village kids weave flowers into their hair. There was so much for her to see.

Amber smiled and nudged his shoulder. "You could deplete all the oxygen on board and it wouldn't be enough for me to change my mind."

"I thought as much." He nodded, taking a final moment to appreciate the resolve in her eyes. He didn't know if it would be there again. Their march into Dark Island was feeling more final by the second, but he wasn't ready to say goodbye. Not yet. Not now.

He strode to the wardrobe and removed a wooden box lined in gold, placing it on the table gently.

"What are you doing?" Amber asked.

"I may not be able to stop you from fighting, but I can stop you from fighting without protection." From the box he removed spaulders for her shoulders, vambraces for her forearms and a thick leather tunic, taking the time to run a hand over each inlaid lion and pray that they protect her.

They assembled the armour in silence, the ship uncomfortably quiet without the joyous chatter of the crew sneaking through the walls, now only the creak of nervous steps remained. Caspian wondered briefly if he could lock her in here, safe from harm, but knew it would only be a temporary measure until she took a sword to the handle or achieved another means of escape.

"Do you think this is why we were brought here?" Amber asked as Caspian secured one of the vambraces, referencing the unimaginable evil they were rapidly approaching.

"It seems likely, though I'm still hoping for something beyond this, something happier." _Trufflehunter would like her_, he thought, and not for the first time.

"Me too." She whispered, drawing back her next words before they could amount to more than a breath, but Caspian noticed regardless.

"What's on your mind?"

Her expression turned unsure, panicked. "I still don't understand why I'm here." Her breathing shuddered suddenly, tears springing into the corners of her eyes as they fixated firmly on a scratch in the table. "I can't tell if I just got lucky, like finding the painting was some competition I stumbled into or or –"

Caspian cradled her face between his hands and caught her eye. "It wasn't luck. I may not know why you were brought here but I can say with certainty that it could have been no one but you." She placed her own hand over one of his own, closing her eyes as a tear traced the length of her cheek before he stopped its progress with his thumb.

He waited, tracing light lines against her cheeks and hoping that the opportunity to do so would arise again in the future, until the crease between her eyebrows smoothed out once more.

"We should go." She whispered, meeting his eyes.

"I'll protect you." He lowered his hands reluctantly, attaching new blades to both their hips and praying for the cold metal to overpower the need to feel her skin again.

"Don't." She responded firmly. "I can handle it, you need to be a King to your men." The reminder was as sharp as a blade. The knowledge that men were counting on _him_, and those even younger than he, to lead.

He was so tired of leading. So tired of fumbling through meetings with royals and enduring failed courtships with women who couldn't find him beyond the glitter of gold he possessed. He was so tired of pretending he knew what to do and what to say, tired of acting proper, and tired of trying to remember what rest felt like.

He was especially tired of knowing that the stubborn woman in front of him would soon become yet another loss in a long line of them. His family, his freedom, his youth, his friends. They stretched across the horizon in an orderly line and as he gazed across the landscape all he saw were the blank spaces waiting to be filled by even more losses. Even more regrets. How many of them would bare her name?

He took her hand and kissed it gently. Bypassing a silent prayer for her good, long life, would not be one of those regrets. "You deserve a true courtship with an honourable soul. I promise you; you will live to receive it." Tears filled her eyes once more as she flung her arms around his neck and clung tight. His own arms pressed firmly against her back, head buried in her hair as to stop his own tears falling.

_I wish it were you_, thought Amber.

_I wish it were me_, thought Caspian.

His affection for her had come in bursts, like a blooming flower that kept stretching its limbs only to curl them back in again when they felt the breeze. She was terribly frustrating at times, though never for reasons he could judge her for, and her resolve was that which strengthened others. With each passing day, each quip and curious thought, every swipe of a sword and step where there should only be stillness, the flower found the courage to unfurl until it blossomed with stunning clarity.

Amber pressed her face impossibly further into the crook of his neck and tried to force every dream she had of Narnia, of Caspian, into the embrace before they tore her heart in two.

The Dawn Treader pressed further into Dark Island's awaiting claws and when they felt the wraith of evil start to scrape itself through their veins, plucking them like harp strings, they let go.

Neither of them strayed far, bodies still close enough to feel the brush of the others unsteady breathing.

Caspian leaned forward the smallest amount and placed another gentle kiss on her forehead before resting his own against the mark of his devotion.

They had stolen all the time they could. Now it was time to face the darkness within.

Stepping back, their eyes latched onto one another with a sorrowful understanding and a simple nod was enough to complete it all. They left the room side by side and paused before the stairs that led to the deck.

There was no option to ignore or delay any further. He had only one choice and it had been carved for him since birth.

He had to be a King.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, rallying his courage into steady hands.

"If _you're_ nervous, what the hell should I be feeling?" Amber muttered from beside him, valiantly attempting to disguise her own fear.

His exhale dissolved into a quick laugh, head dropping down in a quick moment of comfort.

The memories of this, of her, would at least be hard to lose.

They stepped out into the iron night to meet their fate.


	17. Chapter 17

**honestly i'm more surprised than anyone that this fic is being updated**

* * *

The deck had been cleared in their absence. Everything that could move, crates and chairs and the like, had been stowed below deck and only the bare necessities remained. Amber noted that their blanket, hastily stuffed into a corner, had also been taken. Her chest hollowed at the sight, longing to go back into that moment, blissfully unaware of Dark Island's presence looming over their near future. But she couldn't. She was here, now, with the Dawn Treader crew facing bona fide uncertainty in the shape of shadows and mist.

The crew stood in orderly lines across the deck and its raised counterparts at the front and back of the ship, stock still as they watched Caspian ascend to the forecastle and look out across the crowd. He locked eyes momentarily with Amber, then squared his shoulders and spoke out to the crowd.

"No matter what happens here, every soul that stands before me has earned their place on the crew of the Dawn Treader." His voice parts the silence smoothly, and with it, the skulking presence of evil that had been slithering over the ship undisturbed, like a light casting the shadows into nonexistence. "Together we have travelled far. Together we have faced adversity. Together we can do it again. So now is not the time to fall for these temptations. Be strong. Never give in. Our world, our Narnian lives depend on it." The crowd wait with bated breath as he pauses, raising his chin and looking out beyond the ship. "Think of the lost souls we're here to save. Think of Aslan." At his name, the men stand straighter. "Think of Narnia." He concludes, seemingly blinking back into reality with a renewed assuredness.

"FOR NARNIA!" The deck comes alive with a thundering wave of noise, cries torn from throats rich with pride and determination. Amber's heart stutters in her chest as she watches them pierce the air with their blades and the sight of Caspian's pure bewilderment at their response renews a painful ache deep in her chest. She had never known a better man, or one who lacked the confidence they rightly deserve. For the most part, she had only met men with too much arrogance and too little to justify it. She would tell him, when this was over, that he was fit for this. That his parents would be proud and Narnia is safe under his rule, but for now she watched him blink away surprised tears and join Drinian at the wheel.

Then, they entered Dark Island.

A hush fell over the ship, the kind of silence that descended suddenly and brought a physical weight along with it to settle in the throats of anyone who dared break its suffocating hold. Air was stolen from lungs and even the floorboards lost their familiar creak. The waves no longer whispered. Swords were held with white knuckles. The universe held its breath and waited.

Evil had long since ceased to be a stranger, though its presence was an ever-changing discomfort. It creeped down their throats and ran tapered claws across their ribs, scuttling beetles over their heart and spiders up their necks, running fingers through their hair as a mother would, but with the promise that it would soon pluck their head from their shoulders as if it were nothing more than an apple ready for picking.

Marco balled his hands into tight fists at his sides and shut his eyes to block out the taunting voice hissing in his ear, arms powerless to stop the shake of fear, his vambrace rattling against the hilt of his sword at his hip. Tavros laid a heavy paw on his shoulder, almost buckling his knees in the process, but after a few hushed words Amber could not hear, Marco's courage had been restored by a respectable degree.

"If only they would do the same for you." Said a woman. Amber spun and watched the mist cock its head to the side. The shape was shifting, constantly breaking apart into nothing and reforming, but the detail was enough for Amber.

The untamable wave of hair, the long slope of a nose, lips that quirked up to the side almost involuntarily.

The mist took upon another shape. A man. In him she saw the rest.

Wide eyes and thick brows, low cheekbones and hands that never stopped.

For the first time in her life, she saw her parents.

"You're a waste, Amber." He said.

"You don't belong here. You don't belong anywhere." She said.

"They would be better without you. Happier without you."

"Snaresbrook wished you gone." Amber thought of the orphanage. The dim grey halls, strict matrons, and sleeping quarters crowded with the children she spent her days avoiding. Her memories, 17 years of inconsolable sadness, rolled over her in a wave, carving a hole deep in her chest for them to nestle safely inside.

"Graham wished you dead." She thought of the honest farmer. How the crow's feet in the corner of his eyes would deepen when he smiled, sneaking her some fudge, or introducing her to their new chicks.

She thought of his body, crushed beneath his home, buried too soon with the animals he loved like children.

Her mother stepped forward and tilted her chin with a singular, green claw.

"My dear, you are worthless."

Her father joined her mother and lay a hand on her shoulder. She felt it curve around her body and draw her into their hungry grasp.

"You can join us now. The sea is home to many wonders."

"Come." Their voices had a lullaby lilt that blurred into one another at the edges, their words an ever-flowing river that rendered their words indistinguishable from one another. It was unnatural. Wrong.

Amber grit her teeth and steadied her hand on the hilt of her sword. Confidence trickled in through her palm pressed against the engraved lion. "I don't need you." She said firmly.

And for once, she knew it were true.

After all, she had a new family.

"Amber." The faces of her parents turned ugly and made to advance. "Amber." A hand on her shoulder. But this one was different – solid and unwavering. It didn't coil around her like a snake or seep into her bones. She turned to face Marco, who repeated her name for a third time. "Are you alright?" When she looked again to where she had seen her parents there was only empty air.

"I'm fine." She smiled, patting his hand in thanks.

Across the deck she could see others caught in their own personal nightmares, fighting the shadows that slithered in the dark corners of their minds behind locked doors. Most broke out on their own. You could see it in the way they took a hasty step backwards and shook their head, and how their shoulders loosened moments later. She looked toward the forecastle in time to see Caspian call out something she couldn't hear before retreating, escaping the clutch of evil as the others had done. He met her eyes briefly across the ship. They exchanged nods, brief sanity checks, before melding back into their assigned roles.

A voice echoed in the silence.

Amber spun, expecting to see the ghostly green forms of her parents once more, but the air was empty. It spoke again, the words hovering just above the hum of the ocean, and she began to wonder if it was the water itself speaking to her.

That was, until, she realised the crew were exchanging confused glances. Some drifted towards the railing, squinting out across the murky grey fog, while others hovered warily in the centre of the deck, hands holding their blades tighter.

"Keep away! KEEP AWAY!" The voice grew louder and more coherent the further they sunk into Dark Island, while the fog lifted enough to show hulking pillars of stone risen from the sea like a warning.

Amber considered briefly if the rocks were really the teeth of a giant beast and they were unfortunate enough to be sailing between its jaws, ready to be snuffed out in a singular gulp. She could almost laugh at the thought – if not for the sea of other worries coursing through her head – because ultimately, who was to say it was implausible, here, in Narnia?

She joined Edmund at the railing as he parted the shadows with the glow of his flashlight, drawing it across the rocks as the disembodied voice continued to yell.

The light fixated on a singular spot, and a man as grey as the rock he stood on trembled before them, his eyes so large and white they were almost comical.

"We do not fear you." Called Caspian.

The man raised a sword with skeletal arms, waving it frantically in the air while spending all of his, albeit limited, strength in the process. "YOU WILL NOT DEFEAT ME!" He yelled.

The blade shined gold in the glow of Edmund's flashlight. His breath hitched and his grip faltered for a second, almost plunging their only light source into the depths of the ocean, until he regained his composure with a speed only a King could achieve. "Caspian – his sword." He breathed.

"Lord Rhoop! Men – stand down!" The Dawn Treader crew lowered their weapons and watched on as the man, a very bewildered Lord Rhoop, remained in a fighting stance and began to tremble more fiercely.

A wave of unease swept across the ship as Lord Rhoop was dropped ungracefully onto the deck by Eustace, as now they could observe the very real and very ghastly effects of Dark Island.

It seemed his shaking was not due to the fear of the ship, or the sheer effort it took to hold his sword aloft, but a permanent addition to his being after spending so long with only his worst nightmares for company.

His face was gaunt and haunting, skin stretched across hollow bones and deeply lined like creases in fabric. Across his bare arms and feet were shallow wounds made redder when compared to his colourless skin, stray gravel from his home of stone and sea stuck to his limbs with sweat.

"You should not have come – there's no way out of here!" He stumbled over his words as if drunk, eyes never fixating on a singular spot for more than a second. He looked between each and every crew member, their weapons, their armour, and with each fleeting glance they recoiled, sensing something unimaginably dark behind his eyes.

They dared not dream of what he saw. What memories had him fighting fatigue to keep his sword held high. What horrors stole his voice and left a weak, juddering rasp in its wake.

What force could kill a Lord? Not his body, or his power – but his very soul?

It was almost tangible, the sick glee radiating from the Island itself as it devoured their unease. How it crawled into their brains and blew each fear up like a balloon and floated up, up and away, until it had enough dread to lift the ship from the sea and claim it for its own.

"Caspian, we have the sword, lets go!" Edmund said, with the desperation in his voice painfully clear.

"Let's turn her around, Drinian."

The Dawn Treader crew could barely believe it.

Was it that easy? Could they escape without a scratch – only a few devilish images projected through smoke that would be dispelled from their mind in time? It was as if they'd been slapped through to another reality.

The Island thrummed unpleasantly, trying to reign in the dregs of their fear – but their hope was too powerful. Combined, it could have been unstoppable.

Caspian had just turned to head the wheel with Drinian when Lord Rhoop cried out. "DO NOT THINK!" He warned, digging his fingers into Caspian's forearms. "Do not let it know your fears, or it will become them!" The King didn't know what to say. Lord Rhoop's eyes were haunted, wide and darkened by the horrors they had seen, and it took every ounce of his control to think of Narnia and Narnia alone.

"Oh no…" A whisper.

"I'm sorry –" All eyes turned to Edmund. He was thunderstruck. "I'm so sorry."

A chill spread through the ship like an invisible wave of ice-cold water, and together they watched as the pillars of rock stood so resolutely in the sea descended in a smooth arch, a scaly, barbed tail flicking through the water behind them.

* * *

**ok. so. in short.**

**i'm meeting ben barnes in 2 days. **

**honestly that's why i've managed to get this chapter up - i needed somewhere to be like 'look! this is a cool thing that's happening!'**

**next update coming in a month. maybe. or a year. who knows! writing is hard.**

**To the guest who commented during my impromptu hiatus: thank you for the kind words! and thank you for mentioning the swan's wife tale - i did come up with it! i really liked it, so thank u for mentioning it :) **


	18. Chapter 18

**this chapter single-handedly ruined my work ethic for two months so go easy on me ok i'm in a fragile state**

**but a big thank you to the guest who left a very lovely comment on chapter 17, it gave me a well needed boost during my work shift. :)**

* * *

Lucy whirled round to face her brother. "Edmund, what did you just think of?"

He looked at her with terror in his eyes, the words caught in his throat like a wicked barb. He was a fish on a hook, trapped in the prolonged second before being reeled in by whomever would be waiting to take his life, accepting that this, whatever _this_ was, was the end.

The Dawn Treader shuddered and tipped starboard, throwing its occupants to the ground; swords clattering to the deck and skittering away from reaching palms before the ship righted itself. Amber slipped and collapsed in an undignified heap, wincing as her skull made contact with the edge of the stairs.

She hauled herself up on unsteady legs and tried to ignore how her vision swam before her, reaching a hand behind her head as if she could cradle the pain.

Beneath her, the ocean churned with a sudden ferocity, ravaging the ship with waves as black and impenetrable as the night sky while above the clouds laughed deep at their despair, letting loose a merciless tear of white-hot electricity.

Gael, who had emerged onto the deck unnoticed when they had found Lord Rhoop, wandered towards the railing. She lay a light palm on the handrail and leaned over to peer into the sea. What had made them stomp around and yell so loud? What great creature had tipped the ship? Her father always said she was too curious for her own good. Too rash. But just like she had done many times before, she ignored him.

A ribbon of translucent green fins greeted her from the water. It was close enough to the boat that she could see how the veins inside glowed bright, and that the scales on the beasts' great hide writhed with colour as if they were alive. Like the skins of thousands of fish coming together as one.

It could have been beautiful. Green was her favourite colour after all. But this was wrong.

Fear injected itself into her veins and burned jade.

She stumbled back as she watched a tail as large as her bed flick through the water, all while the poison in her grew, scraping itself through her head as it sought her deepest fears and tried to tug them to the surface.

Her back hit the mast and the creature burst free.

Lucy was by her side in seconds, taking her small hand between her own and guiding her quickly downstairs. Caspian, meanwhile, scrabbled across the deck to Amber.

"Go with them. Please, I can't have you here." He pleaded.

Her eyes didn't meet his. They couldn't. "Caspian." She breathed, looking out past the ship.

"_Please,_ just go where you'll be safe. Amber, I beg of you." He asked once more, squeezing her hand as if it would be the last chance to do so.

"Caspian. _Look_." Finally, he turned.

Through the dimly lit fog rose a serpent. It towered above the Dawn Treader and gazed at the crew with blackened eyes, a deep rumbling reverberating from its chest. Like Gael had already glimpsed, every scale across its tree-trunk thick body was glistening green, but this wasn't like the previous forms the mist took on. This was different. They couldn't wave their hand through this mirage, and – even if they could – they daren't try.

The serpent prepared to strike.

"LOOK OUT!" Tavros yelled.

A jet of fire sliced the air and, for a single, terrible second, presented the beast with a clarity the darkness was charitable enough to hide. Its snout, much like a dragon's though with an unhinged jaw, was drawn back to reveal hundreds of deadly sharp teeth, already stained red. The serpents skin pulsed with life, forged from Dark Island's worst depths, it thrived with each pounding heartbeat, every sharply drawn breath and restrained scream, taking each manifestation of their fear to feed its insatiable hunger.

Eustace drove the serpent from the ship, plunging his claws deep into its skull and flapping his wings wildly. The crew watched on helplessly as the pair battled, their hopes sinking by the second.

Hardly one hour ago they believed Eustace to be a giant, unparalleled in both strength and size, but now he looked as small as they felt.

The serpent caught Eustace between its jaws and tossed him astride the rocks carelessly.

Lucy joined the others at the railing and watched on in horror. "Eustace…" She breathed.

Amber swallowed the lump in her throat and placed her left hand over the young Queen's, her right still clutching tight to Caspian's. All they could do was hold faith close to their hearts.

Eustace clawed at the rock, his eyes alight with a mixture of pain and determination that was so achingly human. And when the serpent descended on him with open jaws and razor-sharp teeth, he fought back.

A second cloud of raging fire cut the air in two as Eustace burned away the serpent's flesh, its scales rippling and cracking to reveal throbbing green flesh beneath, soon charred black. Eustace collapsed again; his energy spent but with hope fluttering in his stomach. How can the beast attack without eyes to seek with? Without jaws to bite with?

It plunged low into the water and sent a vicious wave crashing against the ship, but the crew were prepared this time. They clung on, hunched low, and gazed into the water apprehensively.

Everyone except, of course, Lord Rhoop.

"STAND BACK!" He cried, pressing his jutting elbows into stomachs as he fought his way through the crew to the edge of the ship. "BE GONE, DEMON!" With a single, precise swing, the seventh sword arced high in the air and landed in Eustace's front leg.

The crew descended into a clamour of angry shouts, reaching their arms uselessly out to the sea where Eustace released a pained roar and flew into the thickening clouds, his golden tail flickering in a thin shaft of sunlight before disappearing from sight completely.

"EUSTACE! COME BACK!" Lucy cried. Though her anguish was torn – they needed the sword buried in his flesh, she was aware of that, but she also wanted her cousin back. She had left so much go unsaid. How she was happy to have him by her side, claws and all, and how the Dawn Treader could hardly begin to gather their thanks for all his invaluable help.

Though she didn't know if he would permit such an affectionate gesture, she wished to give him a hug. She would at least try, she decided firmly, when they reunited – because they would reunite. Aslan wouldn't allow anything less. No matter the despair or the panic, the times her wishful calls had gone unanswered, or the evil that sang its sinister tune inside her head, she knew that much were true.

"We need to get out of here – now." Caspian ordered, casting a final, wary glance into the water, hoping that it wasn't a glimmer of emerald scales he spied deep down below.

"OUT OF MY WAY!" Lord Rhoop stumbled his way to the wheel and jerked it left, throwing everyone once more to the sodden deck as he manoeuvred them ungracefully towards the far away sun.

"Looks like somebody's already ahead of you." Amber murmured beside Caspian. They shared an uneasy look; The unstable Lord was going to be a liability if they all wanted to escape this journey alive.

With a quick, almost absentminded squeeze of her hand, Caspian bolted to the stairs while the men around him regained their footing. Thankfully Drinian, ever practical though sometimes morally grey, concussed the frail Lord with a solid strike on the back of his skull and regained control over their nearing freedom.

Amber's hope raised its tentative head. It didn't dare believe that they had been fortunate enough to dispatch of the sea serpent completely, but it wasn't likely that the creations of Dark Island could exist beyond its bubble of shadows and terror. All they needed was to reach the sun. That was all. The ache for it grew physically painful, a gnawing in her stomach that ate away at her other thoughts. She didn't think she could handle seeing that beast again.

Her journey across the Narnian seas had not lacked its fair share of terrifying ordeals, from the dufflepuds on Coriakin's Island (while invisible, of course), the slave traders in Doorn – even her first day aboard the Dawn Treader was a unique sort of fear she could've never prepared for. But the sea serpent was none of that. It was death – imminent and painful. She had brushed cheeks with the end before, night after night in London when the sirens blared and the ground shook, but she had no shelter now. There was no ground for her to bury herself under, no alarms to forewarn their doom. Her fear of the sea serpent burrowed deep into her very soul and fashioned itself a home, its strength fuelled by the infectious centre of Dark Island.

The end was in sight. Far in the distance, shafts of light filtered through the clouds, making the water shine like liquid gold. It was enchanting. The crew watched the light shimmer. Waving at them. Beckoning them closer. None of them thought to check the water beneath them. The sight was too mesmerising to look away from.

For a second, everything went quiet.

The water whispered its familiar, comforting song.

The ship mast creaked as it swayed high above.

Steady exhales were marked with clouds of hot breath in the air.

And then the world erupted.

With an ear-splitting screech the serpent exploded from the water and threw itself across the ship, thumping down hard on the deck and splintering the railing beneath its weight. Men scattered to the sides, but another thick coil of scales shot across the deck as the beast wound its way around the Dawn Treader and began to squeeze. Amber felt courage drain from her like blood from a wound.

They could feel the planks of the ship groaning with the effort of staying intact, thin rivulets of water trickling in through the gaps as the crew below rowed with a renewed vigour to free them from Dark Island. The ship tipped sideways, and a wave arched high to soak the deck and its passengers, sending men slipping into the serpent's slimy hide.

Amber followed the tactic of several others on board in attempting to spear the serpent between its scales, sever it from their weary ship, but it had grown too strong, too impenetrable. They ran below for harpoons and arrows, while those up high strategised with distractions and pillars of stone, all while she remained in the middle – lost, helpless, and utterly afraid.

She didn't want to die like this. Watching from the sidelines as those more skilled than she fought to keep their lives while she could merely pray and hope to keep her footing steady and out of reach of the serpent's hungry jaws. The last thing she wanted was to die having made no attempt to live, to let the beast drain her life because she couldn't draw a bow or throw a spear, but what other choice was there? This fight wasn't just for her – it was for all of them, and the consequences of any rash decision would extend past her own being. She wouldn't allow that. She couldn't.

But in the end, when a second is all she would have to make a decision that could either save or end lives, did she really have a choice?

"BRACE YOURSELVES!" Caspian cried from the wheel up above. But Amber didn't hear him. She didn't hear anything.

The Dawn Treader slammed into the sea serpent before them, pinning the livid monster against the rocks embedded in the sea. All around her the men clung onto whatever they could find, bracing their feet the best they could against the tremendous shudder than travelled through the ship. Amber fell roughly to the ground, her head meeting the splintered railing scattered on the deck with a dull, heavy thud.

Her body shuddered like the ship, pain burning through her entire body in seconds. A smaller, though no less vicious, serpent thrashed in her head, and Amber wanted nothing more than to let herself fall limp on the ground if only it would stop the pain. But she didn't.

As the others watched the serpent's wounds burn gold and green, Amber raised herself on shaky legs and wiped fresh blood from her head. Her vision blurred, everything smudging together into a cloud of grey and green and brown. Her head felt twice as heavy as it should be, and all that could be heard was the pounding of her own heart and the rush of blood in her veins, all too eager to flee through the opening in her forehead.

Slowly, shapes began to define themselves; not entirely – but just enough for her to understand.

To understand that the serpent had not given in just yet, that Dark Island had yet to end its mission to claim their lives and their fears, that the fight was far from over.

Its body rippled and opened with a series of clicks and clacks, revealing hundreds of spines that shivered as if sentient. Edmund stood opposite the beast on the deck, feeling like its eyes were searing his flesh, like his own body would open up in a similar fashion and all his deepest, darkest fears would come spilling out and become real.

The crew stood frozen in terror as Edmund forgot how to breathe.

Caspian yelled for his friend, refusing to tear his eyes away from him while the serpent reared back to strike from the corner of his eye.

Amber saw, vaguely, the two Kings in direct reach of the hands of death. She ran forward.

Caspian launched himself into Edmund and braced himself as they skidded across the deck.

The serpent dived and clamped its jaws around the teetering mast.

Its spines buried in the deck, and one, long and spotted black, slid deep into Amber's stomach.


	19. Chapter 19

The world fell silent.

Amber's gaze drifted down to where the spine had sunk into her flesh, watching her blood bubble over its rough skin. She felt her stomach sink impossibly low to the point of nonexistence, leaving behind a gaping hole that filled with pain and fear with tremendous speed.

With a shaking hand, she lifted her sword and cut off the spine and watched as it faded to nothing, dissolving in a green cloud to be reclaimed by Dark Island.

She didn't hear the thud of her blade as it met the deck, or the sharp intake of her own breath as the agony increased tenfold, blood seeping quicker between her splayed fingers. There was only the pounding of her own heart left to fill her ears, though now it sounded like a bomb ticking down towards its detonation.

The sea serpent flailed back out into the ocean and aimed instead for the sail, pitching the ship sideways as it tugged on the wooden beam.

Amber tripped and fell to the ground. She made no move to stand, and when a wave pushed the ship back, she did not resist the way gravity had her slide down the deck limply until her body hit the half-destroyed wall. She couldn't if she tried.

The crew continued fighting. Their concentration was focused solely on the sea serpent as they gathered harpoons and prepared for another attack, launching their weapons out to sea and watching the dull metal sink into the creature's flesh.

Nobody saw the colour drain from Amber's skin.

Nobody was present the moment her hands became so soaked in blood that her fingers began to prune.

Nobody helped her hold onto reality as it slowly slipped away, leaving only whispers of thoughts that scattered to the wind as soon as they floated through her head.

People were yelling, she thought. She could make out the sounds, vaguely, but it was hard to hear over a slow thumping in her head. Though it wasn't just in her head; she felt it underneath her hands too, still pressed firmly to her stomach. _Is that my heartbeat?_ She asked herself. _I don't remember it being so quiet before._

Before her shone a pillar of green and gold and white. It crackled and burned, waving erratically across her hazy vision until it collapsed, slowly, heavily, out of sight. She had no idea what it was. What had happened. All she knew is that she was tired; so, bone-deep, achingly tired. She wanted to close her eyes, just for a minute. Until the pain left her.

On the other side of the deck, the Dawn Treader crew cheered, watching the body of the sea serpent drift down below the ocean before dissipating into nothing. With it left the sinister presence that had latched itself to their beaten-down forms and drained them of hope like a leech drains a man of his blood. They were _free. _

Caspian clapped a hand against Drinian's back and let out a breathless laugh. He looked at each and every one of his crew's faces and smiled, overwhelmingly glad to have them here standing beside him, stretching their blades triumphantly into the air and hugging each other as if it had been years since they had last met. The thought of losing any of them was unbearable.

Up above, the clouds split open and the sky burst with sunlight like it was saving all the warmth and the colour for their return and hadn't wanted to waste a drop when they were unable to appreciate its beauty. They grinned wide, closing their eyes as they faced the sun and let the heat overwhelm them.

Amber sat still and grew colder. She couldn't find it within herself to shiver.

She looked up towards the sky with half-lidded eyes. _Is this… England? I don't remember sunshine like this. _

Her heart skipped a beat.

_Where am I? _

There was a name – she was sure of it – but it was as if her memories had leaked out of her through her wound. She looked down. Her skin seemed impossibly pale, white as bone, and the blood was so, so red against it.

Her eyes drifted up to those scattered on the deck, distracted and chattering loudly amongst themselves. She wanted to call for help, but her body wouldn't listen to her.

It was then, as her gaze drifted unfocused across them, past Marco stripping himself of armour, Reepicheep congratulating the men like a captain would while balancing perfectly on Tavros' shoulder, and Edmund hugging his sister fiercely, that she unknowingly caught Caspian's eye.

He screamed a singular, piercing note, and the world went quiet.

She looked so impossibly small lying there, crumpled in the corner of the deck.

His boots slapped against the floor as he ran over, falling roughly to his knees and pressing his hands instantly against her wound. She didn't feel them. She didn't feel much of anything.

A sob tore through his throat. It was broken, the sound shattered into fragments within his throat and forced to release itself as a half-assembled, crumbling mess. Each piece pierced his throat like glass; he had forgotten how to breathe.

"Hang on, Amber. Please. Please hang on." He pleaded. He yelled over his shoulder. "GET CHIRON!" Several men on the deck scattered, obeying their King and searching for the much-needed doctor.

Nobody knew their search was futile. Nobody had seen him fall through the collapsed railing during the battle or watched the black waves of Dark Island drag him underneath the sea. They searched, hopelessly, for a dead man.

Lucy nudged her way through the crowd that had formed around the pair and gasped lightly, eyes fixated on the rivulets of blood trailing down their wrists and staining their shirt cuffs red. Barely a moment later she turned, running so fast across the deck that her feet hardly skimmed the floor and disappearing into the quiet depths of the Dawn Treader.

Caspian's breathing hitched and his shoulders shuddered. He pressed his hands harder against her abdomen, not daring to take them away for even a second. His arms began to ache with the pressure. Though the surrounding men could see his strain, none stepped in to help. They knew their King. They knew he wouldn't risk letting go no matter what. They knew that he, though he trusted them implicitly, wouldn't allow them to do this.

They also knew and suspected he did too despite not wanting to see it, that there was no hope left. A stab wound to the stomach on a ship with a missing doctor and no land nearby for hundreds of miles didn't allow for a happy ending. Applying pressure wouldn't be enough.

Still, he persisted.

Amber watched on as her reality continued to slip away like the blood that bloomed between the press of her fingers, the barest drops catching in the lines across her palm, just enough that, while she didn't know where she was, she knew Caspian; and knew why the steady stream of tears marring his cheeks had created a second ache higher inside her chest.

She didn't want him there. In the past she had learnt of the failed siege on Miraz's castle before his coronation and the countless soldiers he had seen perish over time. There would always be more; more battles, more losses, more regrets, more scars. She did not want to become one of them.

The words tried to force themselves from her lips, but they were weighed too heavily with emotion to fly, instead filling her throat until she choked, causing her to wonder briefly if she would die of that she had left unsaid before the blood loss. Instead she tried to push at his hands, force them away, praying that he understood what she was failing to say.

He only pressed harder in response, fresh blood coiling over his fingers as his breathing came in fast, sharp bursts. Amber was hardly breathing at all. He leaned in and touched his forehead to hers, shoulders shaking with sobs, cursing all his power and wealth as King for not being enough to save her. He would trade it all; he knew it.

Amber closed her eyes. It was easier like this. Her hands stopped fighting against Caspian's, moving instead to rest against the underside of his wrist where his pulse beat erratically. She barely noticed her own anymore.

She tried one last time to get the words out.

_I'm sorry._

_It's not your fault._

_I love you._

But all she managed was a breath.

The men on the deck fell silent, and even the waves seemed to quiet in respect. The stifling hush in the air made the sound of Lucy barrelling up the stairs and onto the deck all the more resounding.

She threw the door open so wide and so quick that it left a sizeable dent in the wall behind it. Had anyone done the same, they'd have received immediate punishment, but a Queen – more importantly, a Queen on a mission – only received a wide berth.

"Caspian – move!" Lucy slid onto the floor beside him, averting her eyes from the wound and tilting Amber's head back to let two dazzlingly red drops of liquid travel down her throat.

Caspian looked between the glass bottle and Amber's face, worryingly still, his need for air abandoned. Tears clung stubbornly to his eyelashes as he blinked, removing his hands slick with blood away from her side.

Lucy gripped her healing cordial with white knuckles and told herself not to shake. It _will _work, she knew it would. There was no other option.

They watched the wound heal miraculously together, a new wave of tears – but this time of relief – coating their cheeks. Amber's breathing steadied slowly as if she had forgotten how; a child navigating their first steps, clumsy but strong.

She moved her arms. They felt fine – normal. If not for the blood crusting over her wrists and the sea of concerned faces surrounding her like a halo, it would be all too easy to believe that nothing had happened. But it had, and though her body was past it, her mind was not.

Amber peeled her fingers away from her side and directed her gaze downwards. She traced a steady finger, though it felt wrong, like every muscle in her body should be shaking instead, over the smooth, exposed skin of her stomach between the rips in her shirt. The blood there had yet to dry properly, and was all too easy to smear away, revealing a complete lack of injury. The memory of the pain lingered, imprinted on her brain like the aftereffects of a camera flash, but it was gone. Completely.

"That might be the weirdest thing I've seen so far." She mumbled. Each word was hesitant, every breath carefully measured. She never expected good health to feel so unnatural.

Caspian laughed in a singular breath, the sheer relief he felt was almost too much to bear, ten times the weight of his armour. Amber raised her eyes to his, searching, reaching, desperately, for something secure to hold onto. Something real – something safe. She found it immediately in his smile, how it stretched so wide it must have hurt and the way his eyes shined no matter the light, though they seemed brighter today.

He looked between her eyes, confirming that this moment was real, before he took her face between his hands and kissed her.

There was almost too much for her to comprehend. The way he tasted of the salt from his tears. The stickiness of his hands sat snug along the line of her jaw – the same hands that had been pressed against her open wound mere moments ago. The fact that she could feel him smiling as if he wasn't capable of stopping, as natural and permanent as the sun rising every morning. Though she was tired and confused and _very_ aware of the crew crowded together on deck, it felt all too right to draw his mouth closer to her, feel her nose nudging against his own in her haste.

He pulled away, fresh tears escaping the corner of his eyes, and continued to press his forehead against hers. His body shook as he laughed, but the syllables shivered like he still felt the cold terror of what had almost happened.

"Narnians! There are Narnians – lower the long boats!" A crew member cried out.

Emerging from the horizon was a fleet of skiffs, each packed with disorientated Narnians, blinking at the sun as if it were their first time gazing upon such a force of light. At the sight of the Dawn Treader – no doubt a less impressive sight than it would have been hours before – when its sides had yet to be splintered, the mast had not been thoroughly chewed, and the dragon that stood proud at the helm still had its jaw intact, some of the approaching Narnians promptly began to cry with relief. Though battered, the ship was a beacon of hope, of new beginnings, and it was readying itself to greet them.

Caspian stood, drawing Amber up by her waist, and looked out across his newly saved citizens. His brain was struggling to catch up with the sudden change of situation. Blood still stained his hands; he could feel it like an itch that needed scratching.

Drinian turned from the horizon to watch his King. His eyes fell on Amber, her eyes unfocused and haunted, one arm wrapped around the King as if to prop herself up and the other unconsciously tracing the hole in her shirt. There was blood on her face, handprints, and her hair was plastered to her face with sweat. He made a decision.

"Your Majesty." Caspian turned his eyes on his captain, startled, as if he forgot that such a title belonged to him. "We can handle the newcomers. I think you're needed belowdecks." He said, with a meaningful glance to Amber. Caspian looked down and connected the dots.

The last thing a wave of Narnians newly rescued from horrors they could only imagine should see is somebody covered in blood. It would only spark panic, and though the crew were sporting their own share of injuries, they still had energy to spare and life behind their eyes. He nodded to Drinian and mouthed a silent thank you.

At the feeling of Caspian moving, Amber blinked back into the present and obeyed the gentle guide of his arm into the belly of the ship, paying only the slightest attention to her surroundings.

They entered the office.

There had not been enough time to secure the chairs surrounding the grand oak table somewhere stable, and they now lay strewn across the floor, all except one, which Amber collapsed onto heavily.

She expected the action to force a bolt of pain up her side, she _wanted_ it to, in a way. But she remained feeling stubbornly well.

Caspian knelt cautiously before her, trying to catch her eye. "Are you alright?" After the chaos of the fight, his voice sounded too loud in the suffocating quiet of the office. The air felt heavy and settled roughly within his lungs. He wasn't sure what to make of it.

She swallowed. "Physically or emotionally?" He paused.

"Physically." He eventually answered, confused at the need of clarification.

"Incredible." She wasn't being sarcastic – he had come to know when that was the case; the glint in her eye like the sun casting off a rolling wave, the slight tug at the right side of her mouth and the stubborn upward tilt of her chin.

None of that was present now, but she had replied lifelessly, with a low rasp that had forced itself past the threat of tears.

"And… emotionally?" His eyes darted between hers and saw the tears bubble in the corners.

Amber inhaled sharply and released it shakily as if she were laughing. "I've seen a lot of weird things so far, but this" she gestured an unsteady hand to the bloody tear in her shirt and the unblemished skin underneath "this is too much."

Caspian didn't know what to say. The best he could do was rub a comforting thumb across her knee and listen.

"I almost died." She continued, running a fist through her hair and tugging. "I could _feel_ myself dying." Finally, she met his eyes. "What did she give me?"

"Her healing cordial, gifted to her by Father Christmas."

Amber had begun to realise how bizarre of a place Narnia truly was.

Granted, her journey had already been filled with a variety of impossible circumstances, and though the existence of Father Christmas himself was one of the less shocking revelations, she felt herself begin to sink under the knowledge.

Bringing her back from the brink of death was not the only result from Lucy's healing cordial. It had fixed, seemingly, all injuries and ailments. Her head no longer throbbed, and she felt steadier than she ever had before; she breathed easier with lungs no longer blackened from life in London and, of course, she was no longer bleeding from an open stomach wound.

Her mind had become sharper, too. The strangeness of Narnia was no longer just skimming over her skin but seeping into every pore, forcing her to sink underneath the weight of this reality. She had treated it carelessly, like nothing was truly dangerous here. Even when she was taken by slave traders and threatened by dufflepuds there was always something there holding her back from truly fearing for her life. But now she had felt the heavy, cold embrace of death and Narnia had become more dangerous than London.

There was a knock at the door.

Caspian stood. "Come in."

Marco entered the office, arms laden with clean clothes and towels and was shortly followed by Talos carrying two bowls of water, cloths dipped into each. "Drinian told us to bring these to you, Your Majesty." Said Talos.

"Thank you. How are our rescuees?"

"Relieved, Your Majesty." Marco began. "We," He glanced toward Amber and his expression twitched into a frown. "We're approaching Aslan's country. The water is drinkable here and seems to be calming their nerves."

_The end of the world._

Caspian nodded slowly, swallowing the lump in his throat before replying. He noticed that the clothes brought for Amber were the ones she had arrived in, scrambling in the ocean, many months ago.

"I'm glad to hear it."

_This is so soon. I thought we had more time._

"We will rejoin you shortly." The men nodded and left.

_I could board the door. We could stay here, safe, and never have to face what's outside. _

His eyes roamed the office. The landscape outside the window was bare, the sea and sky so similar in the light that they could have blended into one.

_The walls will always be brown and the sea will always be blue. _

His eyes fell on Amber once more.

_But you are the only colour I need._

* * *

**this chapter was supposed to be twice as long as it is but i'm a coward and cut it short. see u in another 2 months **

**thank you lori for your kind comment on ch18. i swear i would not have abandoned the fic after that cliffhanger, though it would be hilarious. if you're feeling inspired - go for it! write your own! there's no reason why you shouldn't. and thank you, again :)**


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